American asset management firm BlackRock and Snowflake, a cloud-based data-warehousing company, announced a strategic partnership to deliver a next-generation solution for the investment management industry.

BlackRock will launch Aladdin Data Cloud, a solution for investment managers to expand the utility of data, powered by Snowflake’s platform.

The Aladdin Data Cloud will be a strategic part of Snowflake’s Data Cloud and a part of the Aladdin platform, a portfolio management software by BlackRock.

The solution allows companies to bring Aladdin and non-Aladdin data together making it easy for users to build on top of it with Aladdin Studio, BlackRock’s platform for developers.

By bringing together Aladdin and Snowflake’s Data Cloud, the Aladdin Data Cloud allows its clients to expand the utilisation of data across their organisation unlocking creativity and increasing operational efficiency.

Each Aladdin Data Cloud client receives an independent, centrally-managed data store pre-loaded with rich front-to-back Aladdin data sets which can then be supplemented with proprietary and other third-party data sources, allowing organisations to access and query their business-critical data on a single, cloud-based platform.

BlackRock’s Aladdin Data Cloud is an evolution of its existing Aladdin Data Warehouse solution and is among a suite of new capabilities that Aladdin expects to roll out in 2021 as part of Aladdin Studio.

“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 customise 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.”