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Snowflake's (SNOW) DoD IL4 Authorization to Boost Prospects

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Snowflake (SNOW - Free Report) , the Data Cloud company, has achieved a significant milestone by receiving Provisional Authorization (PA) from the Defense Information Systems Agency at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to operate at Impact Level 4 on the AWS GovCloud (U.S.-West) region provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This DoD IL4 authorization enables Snowflake's Government & Education data cloud to better serve U.S. public sector customers, including DoD agency customers, by centralizing, analyzing, and securely sharing data at scale while meeting the stringent data governance and security requirements of the DoD.

Snowflake's Government & Education data cloud supports critical workloads, including data warehousing, data lake, data engineering, artificial intelligence and machine learning, collaboration, cybersecurity and applications for government organizations.

The platform is also compliant with various regulations such as FedRAMP Moderate, StateRAMP High, International Traffic in Arms Regulations, Criminal Justice Information Services, Internal Revenue Service 1075, Federal Acquisition Regulation, and Defense FAR Supplement. The addition of DoD IL4 authorization makes it further suitable for regulated workloads.

Moreover, an expanding portfolio and a strong partner base that includes the likes of NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) and Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) bode well for Snowflake.

Expanding Portfolio to Help Developers

Snowflake recently introduced new innovations that enhance data programmability and empower data scientists, data engineers, and application developers to build data cloud faster and more efficiently.

It launched Snowpark Container Services, which expands the scope of Snowpark, Snowflake's secure deployment and processing of non-SQL code, to allow developers to unlock broader infrastructure options. This includes accelerated computing with NVIDIA GPUs and AI software to run a wide range of AI and ML models, APIs, internally developed applications, and more within Snowflake's secure and governed platform.

Snowpark Container Services also provides access to a catalog of third-party software and apps, including large language models, notebooks and MLOps tools.

Snowflake is also simplifying and scaling the development, operationalization and consumption of ML models. The company has introduced Snowpark ML APIs for more efficient model development, a Snowpark Model Registry for scalable MLOps, Streamlit in Snowflake to turn models into interactive apps, and advanced streaming capabilities.

Furthermore, Snowflake has introduced the Snowflake Native App Framework, which allows developers to build and test Snowflake Native Apps within customers' Snowflake accounts. These apps run directly within Snowflake, eliminating the need to move or expose data to external environments, thus ensuring security and privacy.

The framework provides building blocks for faster development, easier deployment and more effective operations, enabling thousands of Snowflake customers to discover and install apps from Snowflake Marketplace without compromising data security.

Strong Partner Base to Aid Top-line Growth

Snowflake recently extended its partnership with Microsoft to offer new product integrations for AI, low code/no code development and data governance. It will bring joint solutions to customers and enhance their go-to-market strategies.

The partnership focuses on improving field collaboration and helping customers use generative AI. Snowflake will integrate with Microsoft's generative AI and LLM services to enable customers to use the latest AI models and frameworks.

Snowflake’s partnership with NVIDIA will strengthen the footprint of the former in the generative AI domain. Snowflake’s partnership with NVIDIA allows customers to use the latter’s NeMo platform for training and running generative AI models within the Snowflake Data Cloud. It also allows customers to access NVIDIA's AI Enterprise software and GPU infrastructure.

Snowflake’s top line is expected to benefit from portfolio strength and an expanding partner base. For the second quarter of fiscal 2024, Snowflake expects product revenues in the range of $620-$625 million. The projection range indicates year-over-year growth of 33-34%. For fiscal 2024, the company now expects product revenues to increase 34% year over year to $2.6 billion.

Zacks Rank & Stock to Consider

Snowflake currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

SNOW shares have underperformed both the Zacks Computer & Technology sector and the Zacks Internet Software industry year to date. While Snowflake has returned 28.1%, the sector and industry returned 35.3% and 47.8%, respectively.

Palo Alto Networks (PANW - Free Report) is a better-ranked stock in the same industry sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Shares of Palo Alto Networks have jumped 81.6% year to date, outperforming Snowflake as well as the broader sector and industry.


Disclaimer: This article has been written with the assistance of Generative AI. However, the author has reviewed, revised, supplemented, and rewritten parts of this content to ensure its originality and the precision of the incorporated information.

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