There’s a nice article linked above in Computer Weekly from last week that highlighted the Francis Crick Institute and SNOW.
I found it was an interesting case study into how Snowflake can quickly embed into the critical workings of a data driven organization.
The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute that was established by funding from UK government agency, UK universities and charities. It has partnerships with organizations around the world. The article linked above specifically quotes 1,400 institutions across 90 countries.
They deal with patient data, so the need for data security and privacy is paramount (complying with HIPAA, GDPR).
To increase the scalability, efficiency, and security of its data infrastructure, the Francis Crick Institute chose to ditch its on-premise data centers in favor of the cloud - specifically, the use of Snowflake’s Data Cloud.
From the institute’s CIO:
“In scientific research, you used to have to log into a file store. Snowflake offers collaboration as a shared service, with real-time access control and workflow for auditing.”
They use all three public clouds that underlie Snowflake (AWS, Azure, GCP).
Doing so has permitted their researchers real-time access to data in a standardized and secure manner.
Gone are the days of highly local and unnecessarily complex project frameworks/infrastructure where solutions were pieced together haphazardly. Now infrastructure can be set up within 30 minutes instead of YEARS, thanks to Snowflake.
"…by using Snowflake, the IT function at the Francis Crick Institute can offer a more permeable environment to enable researchers to work within an ecosystem. “Developing the infrastructure for a complex global consortium used to take as a one to two-year undertaking,” he says. “Now a secure, auditable environment can be built in around 30 minutes.”
What’s great is that the “Data and Analytics Research Environments UK (DARE UK) consortium led by the Francis Crick Institute” is working on a standard platform for research consortiums - where Snowflake is the centerpiece for data:
"The proposed platform is designed to support the creation of secure trusted research environments on-demand, built around the needs and restrictions of individual research projects. The architecture is based on a set of core components that include Snowflake for the data sources, Apache Airflow for workflow, DBeaver as the data extraction, translation and load component, Okta provides user authentication and ServiceNow offers additional controls.
Out of curiosity, I tried to estimate how much the Francis Crick Institute is spending each year on the cloud.
The above article indicates that they only have 88 people in their IT department, and yet, according to their 2021 financial statements (Annual reviews and reports | Crick), they had spent $16 million USD for their IT budget.
I think with these figures, it’s very possible that this organization could be (or become) one of Snowflake’s $1 million+ spenders. There are projections out there that see 51% of IT budgets will be spent on the cloud by 2025 (IT spending will be mostly cloud soon. Are you ready? | InfoWorld). I wouldn’t be surprised if at least $1 million of the $16 million budget is already onto SNOW for the Francis Crick Institute!