Kang Hyoung-jun, country manager of Snowflake Korea, speaks during a press conference at the InterContinental Hotel in Seoul, June 9. Courtesy of Snowflake Korea

By Baek Byung-yeul

Snowflake, a U.S.-based data cloud company, has been enjoying soaring popularity here even though it hasn't yet been a year since the service started as more companies are increasingly realizing the need for easy, fast and reliable data analysis tools, the head of its Korean unit said, June 9.

"Snowflake is a service that exists on public cloud computing services such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform. We call ourselves a data cloud company. Various Korean customers are using our service, especially in the AWS environment," Kang Hyoung-jun, country manager of Snowflake Korea, said during a press conference at the InterContinental Hotel in Seoul.

Established in 2012, the company operates data cloud services, enabling customers mostly from business organizations to store, organize, share, analyze and even sell their data. The company is also well known here as Warren Buffett, CEO of U.S.-based investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, and many Korean retail investors have bought stocks in it.

Snowflake officially entered the Korean market in November, 2021. "Snowflake has a variety of clients across all industries. After the public cloud era began, many people were using our service here even before we officially entered the Korean market last year," the country manager said.

Talking about customers of its service in Korea, Kang said traditional conglomerates and digital-native companies that are not reluctant to use a public cloud computing system, are major customers of Snowflake, although he cannot reveal their names due to security and privacy concerns.

Kang added that many financial companies here such as retail banks will also be Snowflake's customers. "Major retail banks here are undergoing a digital transformation. We are in the process of agreements with them and taking steps to earn required certifications in order to provide our service to them," he said.

Kang said Snowflake will be the most suitable partner for many companies in various industry sectors as they are constantly providing upgraded features. The company announced its new service Cybersecurity Workload, a tool to analyze large amounts of data for cybersecurity issues.

He said their business is not a one-time transaction business, but rather the kind that constantly provides good services and helps customers run better businesses using a variety of data.

"After we sell our service, we continue to communicate with customers. During the seven months of running the Korean branch, we have hired a lot of people and we are now fully ready to satisfy all industrial customers. Snowflake considers the growth potential of the Korean market very high. There is a high demand for Snowflake's services in Korea," Kang said.