BlackRock and Snowflake have announced a strategic partnership to deliver Aladdin Data Cloud, a next-generation solution to help the investment management industry make better use of their data. BlackRock will be a founding partner in Snowflake’s “Powered by Snowflake” program. The two firms will collaborate to address the evolving needs of the investment management community with the stated goal of making data more accessible and actionable, according to a statement released by the companies.
BlackRock and Snowflake Partner on Data Solution for Investment Management
Aladdin is BlackRock’s data warehouse solution; it is an end-to-end investment management and operations platform used by institutional investors including asset managers, pension funds, insurers and corporate treasurers, according to BlackRock. It combines risk analytics with comprehensive portfolio management, trading, operations and accounting tools on a single platform, the company said.
BlackRock’s Aladdin Data Cloud is among a suite of new capabilities that Aladdin expects to roll out in 2021 as part of Aladdin Studio, the firm’s platform for developers to customize, create and collaborate on top of their instance of Aladdin, according to the company. The solution is built to run on all major cloud providers and leverages cloud security and data governance capabilities.
Snowflake's Data Cloud is a global network within which organizations can unify, analyze and share data across multiple public clouds, according to Snowflake. Snowflake’s platform will provide access to and powers the Data Cloud, creating a solution for data warehousing, data lakes, data engineering, data science, data application development and data sharing, according to the statement.
The Aladdin Data Cloud will be a strategic part of Snowflake’s Data Cloud and a part of the Aladdin platform. The solution allows companies to bring together Aladdin and non-Aladdin data and enables users to build solutions on top of it with Aladdin Studio, according to the statement.
Each Aladdin Data Cloud client will receive an independent, centrally-managed data store pre-loaded with Aladdin data sets which can then be supplemented with proprietary and other third-party data sources, allowing organizations to access and query their data on a single, cloud-based platform, the companies said in the statement.
BlackRock and Snowflake: Creating an Industry Standard
“Aladdin has been on a journey for three decades to put data at the heart of the investment process. We’re excited to be working with Snowflake’s innovative technology as we enter the next phase of that journey,” said Rob Goldstein, COO of BlackRock. “Today, each client is able to customize on top of Aladdin and with their instance of Aladdin Studio and the Aladdin Data Cloud, they will have more powerful tools than ever at their disposal.”
"We’re thrilled to be a strategic partner to BlackRock to power a robust data platform for investment managers,” said Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake. “With Aladdin as a strategic part of Snowflake Data Cloud, our goal is to create a new industry standard in financial services for accessing, governing and acting on data in a unified and secure data environment.”