Snowflake makes SnowConvert free and adds support for migrating enterprise data from Amazon

Data infrastructure major Snowflake today announced that it is making SnowConvert, its self-serve offering designed to help enterprises move into its data cloud ecosystem, entirely free of cost. The company also said it is expanding SnowConvert to support migrations from Amazon RedShift (in private preview).

The move comes nearly two years after Snowflake acquired SnowConvert from Mobilize Net for an undisclosed sum. It hopes that by offering the toolkit for free, it can better show enterprises looking to move from their existing solutions the value Snowflake brings to the table and accelerate their migrations to the company’s data cloud. 

In the long run, the strategy could boost the number of active enterprises using Snowflake’s data and AI cloud — further strengthening the company’s positioning against other notable players in the category, including Databricks and Google BigQuery. These competitors are also ramping up their offerings as the race to become the one-stop shop for all things data and AI continues to accelerate.

Why does SnowConvert matter?

For any enterprise selling to businesses, bringing in new customers to experience the product is just as important as perfecting the product in the first place. It’s the entryway that paves the way for long-term deals. For Snowflake, SnowConvert is that entryway, as it tackles the hardest part of migrating from other data warehouses: code and object conversion.

While there are plenty of find-and-replace data migration tools, most of them struggle to make the source code and objects compatible with the targeted platform. This means thousands of database objects and millions of lines of data definition languages (table definitions, view declarations, schema configurations) and data manipulation languages (going from complex queries and insert statements to transformation logic). If one tries to handle this manually, one could end up spending months and hundreds of thousands of dollars just on rebuilding the code and objects and making them functional on the other side. Not to mention, a small mistake and the entire migration could fail.

SnowConvert handles this entire process. It constructs an abstract syntax tree and symbol table to interpret the source code and objects and then builds a semantic model representing the relationship between these elements to recreate a functionally equivalent version on the target platform, i.e. Snowflake. This cuts down the complication of conversion and migration, saving teams a significant amount of time and resources.

“For customers that have used SnowConvert to date, they report saving 60-70% on costs during the code conversion phase of their migration project. That’s significant, especially in today’s data and AI landscape. In addition to cost savings, SnowConvert also offers reliable code conversions, with a 96%+ conversion accuracy rate,” Josh Klahr, head of data warehousing at Snowflake, told VentureBeat.

Goal to make migrations as easy as possible

Now, by making SnowConvert free to download and use, Snowflake is essentially allowing any user, whether they have a single SQL statement or a large data workload, to migrate to its ecosystem. All the user would need is a brief training on the solution to get value from it, Klahr noted in a blog post.

At the core, the motive behind this move is pretty clear: Snowflake wants to remove barriers to entry, simplifying how potential prospects or clients of service providers helping with data workload management can move into its data cloud, and grow its customer base.

“Most enterprises have already decided that migrating to the cloud is essential, but the real question they face is where to go. For some organizations, the choice can come down to one critical factor: ease of migration. How easy your migration process is can make all the difference — it’s the first critical step in any successful cloud AI and data offering,” Klahr noted, adding that the move will help the company win the cloud data and AI market.

He also said that while there are similar solutions from Google and Amazon, SnowConvert stands out with specialization in migrations from select platforms — Oracle, Teradata, SQL Server, and now Amazon Redshift. This ensures automated conversion for most of the objects and code coming from these platforms.

“SnowConvert is tailored to handle the nuances, intricacies, and proprietary features of these platforms. Their databases often come with complex stored procedures, unique data types, and specific syntax that generic code conversion solutions don’t fully address. Databricks also offers Legion, a toolkit designed to support migrations. However, because SnowConvert’s offering is fully integrated with Snowflake’s engineering team, it provides more reliable and seamless code conversions than Legion and…other vendors’ [products],” Klahr added.

The Snowflake migration story 

In the last year alone, Snowflake says nearly 1,500 enterprises migrated their workloads to its data cloud. 

With SnowConvert now free, the company expects that number to grow further in the coming months. The toolkit has so far been used by over 450 enterprises to convert over 2 billion lines of code and over 46 million database objects.

According to Victor Wilson from Hakkoda, one of the cloud consulting companies using SnowConvert, the tool saves them anywhere from 10% to 70% of the time spent on manual code conversion, depending on the complexity. 

“A manual migration for an organization might range from four to 12 months. This work is complex, so every bit of efficiency counts. SnowConvert’s ability to automate manual tasks and quickly convert data sources can translate into approximately $200-450k savings, depending on the organization,” he added.

According to Business Research Insights, the global market for big data platforms such as Snowflake is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.5%, from $73.8 billion in 2024 to $168.41 billion by 2033.

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