Omnata - a play on "omni-data" because data is everywhere - is making huge waves as a simple, fast, effective tool to aggregate and consolidate transactional data into the data and AI cloud, Snowflake.
Omnata has customers globally, but under the hood is a local Australian success story. In fact, the product was borne out of James Weakley's belief "there must be a better way" while wrangling with making discrete systems talk to each other, as a data architect with nib Health Funds.
Weakley worked with the Newcastle-based Australian insurer for five years, tasked with designing a data architecture as the company modernised its classic statck of SQL Server, SAS, on-premises products, Excel, and other things, into a modern cloud-first world.
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Back then, Snowflake was still largely unknown and had only recently launched in Sydney. Yet, from his research Weakly knew there was something special about it. "I was really taken by Snowflake, it felt like a next-gen product. It had a clear advantage over the likes of RedShift," he said. "I took a punt and backed it internally."
This decision made nib one of the first Snowflake customers in Australia, and - to the best of Weakley's knowledge - the first health insurer in the world.
With Snowflake settled on as the central data repository, Weakley's challenge was to build cloud integration, including databases, SalesForce, and other SaaS tools. "That was a pain point," he said. "My job was to figure out how all these systems would talk together."
The answer back then was to go and spend a few million dollars on products like Informatica or MuleSoft - "something you plonk in the middle and wire up."
That was the industry-agreed approach, but it bugged Weakley. "It didn't seem right to me," he said. "All these products were in thre cloud, probably all in the same AWS data centre."
"Why am I, as a customer, having to broker all these minute details of the integration?"
Weakley knew there was a better way. And in the absence of other solutions, he created it himself. "At the time I was focused on SalesForce and prototyped a live query product that ran on SalesForce and could talk directly to SnowFlake." Whenever nib staff opened a SalesForce customer Weakley's app would live query from Snowflake and bring data in.
"There was nothing like that at the time," he said.
James Weakley
The concept was exciting and now proven, and Weakley knew it had far wider-ranging applications than SalesForce and Snowflake communication. Of course, he was working with nib and committed to its success and moved onto his next company project but kept the idea in the back of his head, speaking about it time to time with others.
"I wrote some articles and people came to me saying 'this is really cool, can you consult and help us set it up'," Weakley explained. "I didn't really want to do a bunch of little consulting roles that would get in the way of my day job with nib."
Yet, as more and more people expressed interest in hos solution, the thought nagged Weakley; maybe it was time to make this a product. However, while a smart and clever technical guy, Weakley recognised he wasn't a businessman. "I'd never worked in anything but a tech role. I had no idea how to close a deal and ask people for money."
Enter Chris Chandler; Chandler was working in sales at Tableau. He and Weakley met through a contact and began collaborating about what this idea could really become. And, with Chandler on side, before long the duo had some "serious customers" committing to the idea. It validated the concept was sound, the problem was widespread, and the solution was genuinely desirable.
So ... "we jumped into it full time at the end of 2020," Weakley said. Omnata was born.
Chris Chandler
"The SalesForce use case was interesting, and we got a bunch of customers using it," he said, "but Snowflake felt like the bigger opportunity."
By this time Snowflake was exploding in popularity. "What I was seeing was whenever I talked to anyone Snowflake was becoming the centre of thier data world. Whenever it was deployed it gained viral adoption."
Also, "I knew Snowflake were working on a much bigger platform - SnowPark, machine learning ... all these things meant it was clearly going to become a whole big foundation."
It was time to go all-in on Snowflake; "we started getting excited about what kind of product would suit that architecture. Similar to our SalesForce product, it had to be something that didn't look like the tools of the day."
To this time, about the middle of 2021, Omnata's live query facility used external functions via lambdas. Weakley and Chandler spoke with Snowflake about its roadmap and new features. "We got connected in with their product engineering team and said we'd love it if we could run the whole product on your platform."
Snowflake replied, "that's interesting," telling the pair Snowflake was talking about native apps internally. "We were in the early discussions. We helped shape it," Weakley said. "We were one of the main partners."
And, knowing where Snowflake was going, Weakley and Chandler starting building their new app. "We ran it all locally but built it in such a way we could shift it into Snowflake when the time came."
Well, that time did come - albeit "two years of uncertainty while we waited for Snowflake." The native app framework took several twists and turns in private preview before its public release. "We were able to stick with it as revenue from our Salesforce product continued to grow"
But the day arrived! Snowflake brought its native app framework into general availability early in 2024, and Omnata was prepared from the start. "Then we could really start selling it."
The Omnata Sync app, as you'll have guessed, is a native Snowflake app that can bring data into Snowflake from other sources. It handles the hard work so you don't have to. It ships on the Native App marketplace and can be charged directly to your Snowflake account based on consumption.
The product is so useful, so significant, that out of every Snowflake collaborator, it was Omnata who won the Partner of the Year award at Snowflake Summit in San Francisco earlier this year, as well as a Native App Marketplace award.
Pull data from, and push data to, all your SaaS apps with one tool.
"Our model is we want to go through Snowflake and use the marketplace for distribution as much as possible," Weakley said. "We have a lean team, and if we can leverage 3,000 Snowflake sales reps talking to customers in all corners of the world, then we can do a lot with very little."
One of Omnata's first customers for its native app was the Western Australia government, "and that would not have been possible if we were handling data across our infrastructure," Chandler said. Next came public-listed U.S. companies. "Some small startup from Australia couldn't do it, so going native on Snowflake helped us acquire customers. We're piggy-backing on Snowflake, and we have no burden of needing to handle the data ourselves."
"The fact we can ship a product, and customers don't have to trust us to run it on their behalf, is such a boost for a startup," the duo said. "Normally, a startup would go after small customers with small budgets to get a foothold, but [by leveraging Snowflake native apps functionality] we have people talking to us who it has taken years for SaaS products to work up to."
While Omnata has a registered entity in the U.S. for sales and marketing, it's still solidly headquartered in Australia. The company says as it grows it will maintain the core team locally but look at near-shoring certain types of roles in South-East Asia.
"Some [international] customers are put off by the distance aspect, but when you're not hosting systems, when you're not directly running the day-to-day on their behalf, they become more tolerant of distant teams," Weakley said.
"We go over each year to Snowflake Summit and it's always super valuable to meet people in person too," he said.
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