It is often expensive and complex and can be a barrier that prevents organizations from building data streams and using data analytics for decision making. What everyone may know is that tools that can simplify the process and reduce costs can support data-driven decision making.

Free ingest eliminates the usage fees that would apply for ingesting data into Snowflake. According to the vendor, it is designed to eliminate the cost of the expensive data ingestion process, reduce its complexity and increase data security.

Vendors specializing in data ingestion include Coefficient, Fivetran, Precisely and Wavefront.

Ascend.io’s chief business officer Tom Weeks said data adoption is only a small part of what Ascend.io does. He goes on to say that because customers pay for the time spent monitoring data, orchestrating, converting and delivering, Ascend.io can offer this capability to Snowflake users for free.

“By providing its data ingestion capabilities for free to Snowflake users, the company aims to help them accelerate time to value … but also – no doubt – set the stage for broader cloud adoption for data automation”,

says Matt Aslett, analyst at Ventana Research.

Free Ingest is only available for Snowflake, but has goals to extend the feature to users of cloud storage platforms from vendors like Databricks and cloud computing giants Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft by the end of 2023.

In addition to Free Ingest, Ascend.io’s roadmap for next year includes architecting tools to better enable data grids and data structures, according to Tom Weeks.

The goal is to free up data scientists and IT staff to perform deeper data exploration while leveraging the domain expertise of employees across departments.

The f Anaconda’s Embedded Partner Program launch brings to end-users a seamless access experience. Regardless of whether Anaconda is embedded behind the scenes, the new program gives provides a reliable and secure method to manage Python environments and to enjoy the innovations of open-source development.

Anaconda released formally its new program as enterprises want access to a supported open-source Python ecosystem for its users, products, and services. The formal launch also comes along with Anaconda’s recent influx of financing that included investments from Snowflake Ventures and Apertu Capital.

Some of the members of the Embedded Partner Program are App Orchid, Guidewire, IBM, Microsoft, Schlumberger, Snowflake, and others. By joining Anaconda’s Embedded Partner Program, customers also gain support and services, including SLAs for requests, on top of Anaconda’s core offerings.

Embedded Partner Program provides partners with the power to choose how to experience Anaconda. Users can choose to embed Anaconda within their backend systems, allow their customers to create managed Python environments, or provide access to Anaconda’s repository of Python or R Conda packages.

The launch of Anaconda’s Embedded Partner Program brings end-users a seamless access experience. Regardless of whether Anaconda is embedded behind the scenes in order to power a company’s solution or made available directly to an organization’s users.

Anaconda chose to formally release the Embedded Partner Program now as enterprises want access to a supported open-source Python ecosystem for their users, products, and services without needing to worry about security, licensing requirements, or dependency management. This formal launch also comes on the heels of Anaconda’s recent influx of financing that included investments from Snowflake Ventures and Apertu Capital.

Members of the Embedded Partner Program include App Orchid, Guidewire, IBM, Microsoft, Schlumberger, Snowflake, and others. By joining Anaconda’s Embedded Partner Program, members also gain support and services, including SLAs for requests, on top of Anaconda’s core offerings.

With the Embedded Partner Program, partners have the power to choose how to experience Anaconda. Users can choose to embed Anaconda within their backend systems, allow their customers to create managed Python environments, or provide access to Anaconda’s repository of Python or R Conda packages.

Today, Snowflake has just announced it started to support Python within the company as part of Snowpark, Snowflake’s developer framework. From now on developers can collaborate on data in their preferred language. At the same time, they can leverage Snowflake’s platform to build scalable, optimised pipelines, applications, and machine learning workflows.

Snowpark will still support Java and Scala, allowing users to have different languages and different users options. They will all work together against the same data with one processing engine, without needing to copy or move the data. This method helps developers because it gives them flexibility and a simpler environment that requires less administrative work and maintenance. SVP of Product at Snowflake Christian Kleinerman commented:

“Snowflake has long provided the building blocks for pipeline development and machine learning workflows, and the introduction of Snowpark has dramatically expanded the scope of what’s possible in the Data Cloud. As with Snowpark for Java and Scala, Snowpark for Python is natively integrated into Snowflake’s engine so users can enjoy the same security, governance and manageability benefits they’ve come to expect when working with Snowflake. As we continue to focus on mobilising the world’s data, Python broadens even further the choices for programming data in Snowflake, while streamlining data architectures.”

Canva’s Head of Platforms says it’s easier to grow with Snowflake

At a media launch for Snowpark for Python this week, Canva’s Head of Data Platforms Greg Roodt said that Canva is taking advantage of the technologies Snowflake provides. He added that Canva had previously been with a platform with “fixed costs” and this became difficult as Canva grew in size so quickly.

 Novartis works with Snowflake

Loic Giraud, the Global Head of Digital Platform & Product Delivery at Novartis, said they’re using Snowflake because:

“… the flexibility and scale of Snowflake’s Data Cloud allow us to accelerate our pace of knowledge through data interpretation and insight generation, bringing more focus and speed to our business. Bringing together all available data ultimately unlocks more value for our employees, patients, and health care providers, and data science innovations help us realise this goal.”

With Snowpark for Python, data teams can:

• Accelerate their pace of innovation using Python’s familiar syntax and ecosystem of open-source libraries.
• Optimise development time by removing time spent dealing with broken Python environments with an integrated Python package dependency manager.
• Operate with improved security by eliminating ungoverned copies of data with all code running in a secure sandbox inside Snowflake.

New developments within Snowflake include:

• Cross-cloud account replication;
• Improved replication performance;
• Expanded governance capabilities and integration;
• Snowpark: Stored Procedures to define, execute, and schedule complex application code entirely within Snowflake with no separate client to manage.
• Snowpark: Unstructured File Processing using Java functions directly within Snowflake;
• Snowpark: Logging Framework to help improve development productivity.

US companies alone raised a record $435 billion in stock sales in 2020, with more than a quarter of that figure coming from IPOs. The vast majority of those new listings defined themselves as technology companies. Cloud-based software firms like Zoom, Snowflake, Asana, Airbnb, and Palantir all performed particularly well, and continue to see their stock price flourish as remote work and e-commerce continue to be the norm for many into 2021.

The question now is whether this trend will continue through the year. There are a host of companies eying an early debut in 2021 to take advantage of favourable conditions. But, as with all market debuts, timing will be everything, with a number of industry analysts increasingly warning of a bubble.

Here are the biggest technology IPOs of the year so far.

Thoughtworks

Software consultancy Thoughtworks had a strong IPO in September when shares rose 24% on its Nasdaq debut. The stock opened at $26, well above its expected range of $18 to $20, valuing the company at nearly $9 billion. Founded in Chicago in 1993, Thoughtworks was a contributor to the growing popularity of agile methodologies in software development thanks to employees like Martin Fowler and Jim Highsmith. It counts companies such as Kroger, Daimler, and PayPal as customers.

ForgeRock

Identity software maker ForgeRock had a solid debut when it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 16, with shares rising by as much as 46%. The San Francisco-based company saw its shares listed at $25, which was above its expected range of $21 to $24, before closing at $36.50. That places the company’s value at just shy of $3 billion.

Couchbase

NoSQL database specialist Couchbase saw its stock price jump by as much as 39% on its July 22 market debut, valuing the company at more than $1 billion. Initially priced at $24 a share on the Nasdaq exchange, stock in the company jumped to $33.25 a share on its first day of trading, up 38.5%, before settling closer to $30 at the end of the day. Couchbase provides managed NoSQL database services and competes with the likes of Oracle and MongoDB, which had its own blockbuster IPO in 2017 and now boasts a market cap value of $23 billion.

Wise

UK fintech success story Wise floated on the London Stock Exchange on July 7 as a direct listing —meaning no new shares were sold — at a starting price of £8 ($11) per share before rising 10% to £8.88 during its first day of trading. That put the company’s value at £8 billion ($11 billion) \ making it the biggest ever tech float on the LSE. Founded by two Estonians and formerly known as TransferWise, the fintech firm is best known for its online international money transfer and cross border payments services.

SentinelOne

Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne closed its June 30 debut on the New York Stock Exchange up 20% at $42.50 per share, well above its expected range of $31 to $32 per share — valuing the company at $10 billion. That far surpassed rival firm CrowdStrike’s blockbuster $6.7 billion debuts in 2019.

Founded in Israel and now based in California, SentinelOne specializes in endpoint security, using machine learning techniques to combat cyberattacks under its Singularity platform product. It competes with the likes of UK-based Darktrace, which also floated this year, and CrowdStrike. SentinelOne had raised $267 million on a $3.1 billion valuation just last November but still runs at a loss, posting a net loss of $64 million in the last quarter.

Confluent

Confluent floated at $36 per share on June 23, well above its listing price range of $29 to $33 a share, valuing the company at $9 billion. The Mountain View, CA-based company provides customers with an enterprise version of the popular open-source Kafka streaming data platform. The technology is used by retailers, automotive makers, banks, and other enterprises to gain faster insights into their business than traditional “data at rest” analytical approaches, and by app developers as a way to power performant event-driven applications.

Sprinklr

Customer experience software maker Sprinklr priced its shares at $16 at its IPO in June, below its target range of $18 to $20, valuing the company at $4 billion. Best known for its social media management, advertising, and content marketing tools, Sprinklr counts some of the biggest brands in the world as clients. It had revenues of $387 million for the latest financial year at a net loss of $41 million.

Monday.com

Israeli workplace management software maker Monday.com floated on the Nasdaq on June 10 at $155 a share, rising to $174 on the first day of trading. That puts the company value at $7.6 billion. The cloud-based platform allows companies to create customizable project management tools and competes with the likes of Trello and Asana, the latter of which had a market cap of $10 billion at the time of the IPO.

ZipRecruiter

Online job search engine ZipRecruiter floated via a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange in May, with the stock jumping 17% to $21 a share, valuing the company at $2.4 billion.

Squarespace

Website builder Squarespace floated on the New York Stock exchange via a direct listing in May, with the stock falling 13% on debut to $43.65 per share, valuing the company at $6.4 billion — well below expectations. Founded in 2003 by Anthony Casalena as a blog out of his University of Maryland dorm room, the website building and hosting firm is well known to podcast listeners everywhere as its ads became ubiquitous with the medium. The company has also been consistently profitable, pulling in a net income of $30.6 million in the last financial year.

SUSE

The rumours were true. EQT, the Swedish-based private equity firm, spun out the Linux distributor SUSE in a May IPO on the Frankfurt exchange. The debut itself was fairly muted, with the stock climbing just above its €30 issue price, valuing the company at €5 billion ($6.1 billion).

Having established itself as an enterprise Linux specialist, SUSE has evolved with the times, now focusing on helping customers navigate the container era, a shift which culminated with the acquisition of Kubernetes specialist Rancher Labs in July 2020.

Darktrace

UK cybersecurity company Darktrace floated on the London Stock Exchange in April, with shares rising by as much as 43% to £3.58 on the first day of trading. That’s up from its guide price of £2.50, giving the company a value of around £2.4 billion. Founded in 2013 by a group of mathematicians and ex-Intelligence agents, the Cambridge-based firm uses machine learning techniques to analyze enterprise data to help detect and respond to cyber security threats. It generated revenue of almost $200 million in revenue in its latest financial year, running a small profit of $9 million.

PensionBee

UK-based Fintech company PensionBee successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange on April 21, pricing shares at £1.65, somewhere in the middle of its pre-IPO range of £1.55-£1.75. That put the company’s value at £365 million. The core PensionBee product allows customers to consolidate various pensions into a single plan, accessible through web and mobile apps.

UiPath

UiPath closed its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $69 on April 21, up 23% from its guide price of $52-$54 and valuing the software company at $35.8 billion. The company last raised $750 million in Series F funding in February 2021, at a post-money valuation of $35 billion. UiPath specializes in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software, which promises to do away with repetitive menial tasks to free up employee time. Customers include the likes of Cleveland Clinic, which used UiPath software to register patients attending COVID-19 testing sites and automatically print labels.

Coinbase

Coinbase, the company behind the popular cryptocurrency exchange, floated on the Nasdaq on April 14, with shares jumping by as much as 71% on debut, up from its reference price of $250. The stock closed its first day at $328.28, valuing the company at $85.8 billion; that’s more than double the market cap of Swiss mining giant Glencore or America’s oldest bank BNY Mellon. Coinbase opted for a direct listing instead of a traditional IPO, where no new shares are created and no underwriters are involved. Coinbase made $1.3 billion in revenue in its last financial year — up from $534 million the previous year — turning a profit of $322 million in 2020 after losing $30 million in 2019, according to a filing with US securities regulators.

Coursera

Online learning platform Coursera debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on March 31, closing at $45 which was up 36% from its debut price, valuing the company at $5.9 billion. Founded in 2012 by former two computer science professors, Coursera has become a leader in online learning, a market that boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean had a disappointing float on the New York Stock Exchange on March 24, with its stock sinking 9.6% on its first day. The New York-based cloud firm initially priced its IPO at $47, which was on the top end of the expected range of $44 to $47. It closed its first day at $42.50 a share, valuing the company at $4.5 billion. DigitalOcean promises a simple platform for software developers to quickly spin up and host applications in the cloud on virtual private servers (VPS).

Trustpilot

Reviews website Trustpilot floated on the London Stock Exchange on March 23, where its stock surged by as much as 11% on debut, hitting £2.95 a share, up from its offer price of £2.65 ($3.65). That puts the company value at £1.1 billion. The Danish firm collates independent reviews for online businesses and counts as many as 120 million reviews by the end of 2020, for everything from utility providers to yoga studios. It makes money by selling subscriptions to businesses that want to engage with consumer reviews in their marketing campaigns.

Olo

Food-ordering software maker Olo raised $450 million in an initial public offering on March 17. The New York-based SaaS company sold 18 million shares at $25 each, above its pre-IPO range of $20 to $22, valuing the company at $3.55 billion. Olo software powers loyalty programs and allows restaurants to manage orders and menus and currently counts a range of US-based customers including Five Guys, California Pizza Kitchen, and The Cheesecake Factory.

Qualtrics

Utah-based software company Qualtrics went public on Jan. 28, just two years after its $8 billion acquisition by German software giant SAP on the eve of its first planned IPO in 2018. Qualtrics initially priced its IPO at $30 per share, which was the top end of its expected range, before popping a massive 52% on its Nasdaq debut. It closed at $45.50 a share, valuing the firm at $27.3 billion. Qualtrics started life as an online survey software provider before growing into a platform for large companies like Disney, BMW and Adidas to collect a variety of “experience data” from employees and customers.

The new funding round, led by Riverwood Capital, brings the Redwood City, Calif. The funding round included participation from new investors Sanabil Investments and Snowflake Ventures and existing investors Costanoa Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Icon Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures and Union Grove Partners. Today businesses and organizations are wrestling with exploding volumes of data and struggling to identify the data they have and manage it.

Alation develops data catalogue software and tools for data governance and data search and discovery that businesses and organizations use to identify and manage their data assets for business intelligence, AI and machine learning tasks and for meeting data regulatory and governance requirements. An initial public offering for Alation is probably still two to three years off, co-founder and CEO Satyen Sangani said in an interview with CRN. Sangani also said:

“We just think we have such a massive market opportunity in building out the data intelligence category and realizing its full vision and capability. There are so many different elements of data – the complexities with data and making it really, really simple is something we could spend the next 20 years on and still have work to do. I think the market is in its infancy. What we’ve got today is a drop in the bucket relative to the market opportunity we see in front of us.”

Data governance and compliance have historically been the biggest use-cases for Alation’s software. But Sangani said demand is also being driven by the need for trusted data for AI and machine learning tasks, for data cloud migration, and for the growing use of data for self-service, data-intensive applications.

“There’s just tons of data moving from on-premises systems to the cloud, workloads and applications moving from on-premises systems to the cloud, and we see that literally every single day. Alation’s strategic alliances with data cloud service provider Snowflake and cloud application vendor Salesforce are catalysts for Alation sales for such tasks.”

Alation is focused on leveraging the new relationship with data cloud service provider Snowflake: The two companies plan “deep product integrations and joint go-to-market initiatives,” Alation said in the announcement of the new funding.

Alation will apply some of the new funding to accelerate research and development efforts for its products, including developing connections to additional data sources and extending its software to the cloud. Some of the new financial resources will be used to continue Alation’s global expansion, including expanding into new vertical markets and establishing relationships with solution providers and ISV partners in EMEA and the Asia-Pacific region.

The company launched its official channel program, the Alation Partner Network, in July 2020 to recruit reseller, systems integrator and technology partners.