Snowplow's New Data Modeling Pack and Open Source License Updates

Snowplow’s new Data Modeling pack provides open source users with access to Snowplow’s existing data models and our brand new data models, the Unified Data Model, Media Model and Video and Media Analytics Accelerator. 

Seamless cross-platform identity stitching with Snowplow’s new Unified Digital Model

Our new Unified Digital Model is designed to unify journeys across web and mobile with cross-platform tracking and deterministic identity resolution out-of-the-box. With disjointed customer journeys an unavoidable reality for data and marketing teams, the need to accurately identify and stitch the customer journey plays an essential role in every downstream application. Previously this would have required building a custom data model bringing significant development and debugging time as well as increased processing cost.

The model removes the need for complex modeling and provides a single view of customers in your warehouse or lake for downstream applications, aggregating raw web and mobile events into a set of derived tables - users, sessions and views. 

The new Unified Digital Model supersedes our existing web and mobile models and is designed to work even if you are using web only web or mobile only trackers, with the flexibility to add additional platforms when required. 

This model will be released under our new Personal and Academic license and only available as part of our Data Model Pack. Snowplow customers who have purchased BDP can use this model at no additional charge. 

Read more in our dedicated blog post. 

See a second by second view of how customers interact with your videos with the Video and Media Analytics Accelerator

Snowplow’s Video and Media Analytics Accelerator provides a granular view of how your customers interact with your videos and ads second by second. With ownership of the full data set, you can combine video and advertisement tracking data at a user, session, or page/screen-view level with your existing event data from across the business to understand how much your video efforts are moving the needle. Combined with the enhancements we have made to our Media model this year you will have a powerful tool for understanding user engagement. 

The updates to our media model to support this accelerator will be released under our new Personal and Academic license and only available as part of our Data Model Pack.

Why are Snowplow’s data models being introduced under Personal & Academic License (SPAL)?

As Snowplow continues to evolve, our future roadmap will focus on helping teams extract business value from the Snowplow data they create - aka. the “last mile”. This includes building solutions that run on our BDP platform, like Snowplow Digital Analytics.

Future versions of our open source data models code that enable organizations to unlock business value will be made available under our Personal & Academic License (SPAL). The SPAL license allows use for non-commercial purposes, but these components can be licensed under our new Data Modeling Pack. Full details of the license can be found in our documentation.

As an example of these new licensing changes, we are releasing our dbt models for media and e-commerce under the SPAL license as they are core components of applications designed to enable companies in specific verticals to get to value from the underlying Snowplow platform technology.

Founded as an open source project, Snowplow takes a "glass box" philosophy, our code is available to provide visibility into how Snowplow processes data. We want to encourage the use of this code as an educational tool for students and provide future leaders with access to our technical knowledge.

If you are a Snowplow customer who has purchased BDP Enterprise or BDP Cloud, your usage of the data model pack is governed by your existing commercial contract.

What component of Snowplow Open Source will be released under SPAL?

The first components that will begin to be relicensed under SPAL will be a series of our data models including; 

• Media dbt models 
• Ecommerce dbt models 
• Unified Digital models
• Content recommendations dbt models (coming soon)

These components will be released under the new license during the next major or minor updates. Older versions of the models will still be accessible under the Snowplow Community License.

How can I license data models for commercial use?

Snowplow will be releasing a series of Data Model packs licensed under an annual subscription, the first being “Digital Foundations”. The Data Model pack will provide access to the following data models, including release updates and support via our help desk and documentation:

• Media dbt models 
• Ecommerce dbt models 
• Unified digital dbt models
• Content recommendations dbt models (coming soon)

As always you will be free to use our models as a starting point and customize them to your business needs.

How can I find out more about more?

If you would like to learn more about our data model pack you can speak to a Snowplow expert here.

If you have any questions around our license please contact us at ip-portfolio@snowplow.io.