Snowflake acquires SnowConvert to accelerate database migrations to data cloud

Montana-based Snowflake today announced an agreement with Mobilize Net to acquire SnowConvert, a suite of tools to help enterprises migrate their databases to the Snowflake data cloud. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.  

Today, there are plenty of data duplication solutions for Snowflake, but not many give due attention to the hardest aspect of data migration – code conversion. 

A legacy database can have millions of lines of DDL, BTEQ and thousands of objects. To ensure a successful migration, this code needs to be rebuilt and made equally functional on the other side. This takes a lot of time and effort, and a slight mistake could cause the migration to fail. 

To address this challenge, Mobilize developed SnowConvert. The toolkit uses sophisticated automation techniques with built-analysis and matching to re-create functionally equivalent code for tables, views, stored procedures, macros and BTEQ files in Snowflake. It can migrate databases from any source data platform (such as Oracle, Teradata or Spark) and instantly cut down the time and effort spent on manual coding. According to Snowflake, the toolkit has already been used to convert more than 1.5 billion lines of code.

How this acquisition will help Snowflake

By acquiring SnowConvert, Snowflake will expand its professional services footprint in Costa Rica, Colombia and Bellevue. It will provide enterprises with seamless access to the toolkit, making it easier for them to migrate their data and start leveraging the data cloud.

“One of our key objectives at Snowflake is to make it as fast and simple as possible for our customers and partners to unlock value from data. For many organizations, that starts with the efficient migration of their legacy databases and applications to the data cloud,” Ted Brackin, Snowflake VP of professional services, said. 

“With the acquisition of SnowConvert, we can help more customers, partners and, more broadly, our Snowflake partner network move more data and applications into the data cloud, enabling customers to obtain faster value from their investment in Snowflake sooner,” Brackin added.

While the closing of this deal remains subject to required regulatory approvals and other closing conditions, it must be noted that this is not the first deal from Snowflake to strengthen the footprint of its data cloud. 

Just a few weeks back, Snowflake announced the acquisition of time-series forecasting company Myst. Prior to that, it had acquired document-understanding platform Applica and open-source app framework Streamlit. The company has more than 7,000 enterprise customers at present.

Separately, today Mobilize Net also posted Growth Acceleration Partners’  announcement of a signed intention to purchase its Application Migration Business Unit, similarly subject to terms and regulatory approval.