At least every few years, utility companies release squadrons of drones into the skies to digitally photograph hard-to-reach equipment and check for wear and tear. Around the world, there are 3 million miles of high-voltage transmission lines – enough to go from the moon and back half-a-dozen times – and as much as 64 million miles of local transmission lines; that represents a lot of images, and even more data.

Since the very first email was sent more than 50 years ago, the now-ubiquitous communication tool has evolved into more than just an electronic method of communication. Businesses have come to rely on it as a storage system for financial reports, legal documents, and personnel records. From daily operations to client and employee communications to the lifeblood of sales and marketing, email is still the gold standard for digital communications.

Customer advocacy is one of the Snowflake Support team’s most important roles. Working closely with customers around the world every day, we listen and learn to gain meaningful insights into Snowflake products, the ways our customers use those products, and the challenges they face. We feel a deep responsibility to take those insights and trends, analyze them, and drive positive change on behalf of Snowflake customers.

Relational databases are great at processing transactions, but they’re not designed to run analytics at scale. If you're a data engineer or a data analyst, you may want to continuously replicate your operational data into a data warehouse in real time, so you can make timely, data driven business decisions.

Deciding to adopt an AI-first strategy is the easy part. Figuring out how to implement it takes a little more effort. It requires a clear-eyed vision built around well-defined goals and a realistic execution plan. Being AI-first means setting up your organization for the future. By leveraging data, analytics, and automation, a company can gain a better understanding of where it is and where it needs to go.