‘We don’t chase the shiny objects. We make sure our organizations are looking well out there and understand what it takes to be successful,’ says Jim Martindale, CEO of Snowflake partner BlueCloud.
As questions and concerns swirl around the IT industry about a potential AI bubble, solution providers who are elbow-deep in the technology said they are believers in the foundational shift it is ushering in.
Just ask a few Snowflake solution providers.
Jim Martindale, CEO of Tampa, Fla.-based Snowflake partner BlueCloud—No. 484 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500—told CRN that after 36 years of experience in IT services, he’s seen his technology hype cycles from ERP to the dot-com and e-commerce wave. He believes that AI is here to stay and that solid data foundations are now a business fundamental.
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“We have got to stay true to who we are,” he said. “We don’t chase the shiny objects. We make sure our organizations are looking well out there and understand what it takes to be successful. … We focus on the mechanics.”
Bernadette Kogler, co-founder and CEO of Arlington, Va.-based RiskSpan—which has been a Snowflake partner for about three years and caters to clients in asset-backed finance—told CRN that she and her clients already see bifurcation in the AI era, with companies that embrace AI moving faster. Still, she sees a huge opportunity in helping clients normalize databases and build reliable data before unlocking AI use cases.
AI and agents have already become so embedded into everyday technology that it’s getting harder for people to outright avoid it. “AI is going to change everything—there’s no doubt in my mind,” she said. “It’s just a matter of how fast it’s going to go.”
Based on her long career in and around finance, Kogler said that economic downturns are when companies invest more in efficiency and process redesign. “We all know the credit cycle will end, and when [clients] come out on the other side, they want to go faster.”
Eduardo Ramos, founder and CEO of Austin, Texas-based Snowflake partner Viewnear, said he’s not too worried about a market correction, with AI catching on in the long run as it improves in quality and as costs fall. AI holds as much importance to technological innovation as the internet and electricity, he said.
“I feel like 1995 when I was learning HTML: Every single month there was something new,” he said. “I feel like that 12-year-old boy, learning HTML. I feel like that with AI being adopted into enterprise.”
Joe Berg, general manager and global leader for data and AI at Seattle-based Snowflake partner Slalom, No. 31 on CRN’s 2025 Solution Provider 500, told CRN that a lot of hype still exists in AI, but he’s confident in its longevity due to the number of customers moving from experimentation to production and reallocating budget to AI and building platforms, teams and AI factories to enable adoption and integration.
“We moved beyond a lot of the hype,” he said. “We moved through a lot of the experimentation. There’s still a lot of unknown, but there’s a lot more knowledge in the opportunity that’s there with it. And we’re getting more grounded.”
