Our Story
We watched software teams own their systems.
Data teams deserved the same.
Monitorial started with a simple observation: the software world solved operational ownership years ago. Shift-left security. Unit testing at the atomic level. Test-driven development. Continuous integration that broke builds before bad code shipped. Post-mortems that fed back into prevention. If your service was unhealthy, you knew before your users did. Data teams hadn't caught up yet.
The gap we saw
We met on a project. Jon was head of software engineering, Simon was head of data. Different disciplines, similar values. What stood out was watching Jon's team operate — they felt responsible for every corner of their systems. Not just the code. The deployment, the monitoring, the recovery, the alerting, the post-mortem, the fix, the prevention.
Our data team? Good engineers, smart people — but this was 2018 and our first cloud-first project after years of on-premise tooling. We didn't have dedicated DBAs any more. There was no one else managing costs, security threats in the cloud weren't the same ones we'd hardened against for twenty years — different attack surfaces, different responsibilities, different discipline required. And no one else was making sure pipelines ran on time. If we were going to operate in the cloud, we needed to own the platform — not just the code we deployed into it.
The software world had solved this years ago. Data hadn't caught up.
The ownership philosophy
You don't own Snowflake. You're not responsible for Snowflake's uptime or their query engine or their infrastructure. That's their job, and they do it well.
But you absolutely own what you put into it. Your pipelines. Your models. Your schedules. Your security posture. Your costs. The way your teams interact with the platform.
Monitorial exists to help you own that layer — with the same rigour software teams bring to production.
How we got here
The Project That Started It All
Jon and Simon met on a project — head of software engineering and head of data. The contrast between how software teams owned their systems versus how data teams operated planted the seed.
First Terraform Scripts
The first version wasn't a product. It was a set of Terraform scripts that configured Snowflake notification integrations — the most basic form of knowing when your pipelines fail.
Monitorial v1 — Streamlit App
A fully fledged monitoring product with a Streamlit front-end hosted outside Snowflake. Paid customers, real monitors, proven value — but we knew the architecture needed to live inside the perimeter. The Snowflake Native App framework was still new, Streamlit was maturing, and the platform simply couldn't support the product we envisioned. Not yet.
Native App Development with Omnata
We partnered with Omnata — award-winning Native App creators — as a development partner. We've shipped around 20 production Native Apps on the Snowflake Marketplace under their brand. By the time we built Monitorial Pulse, we'd already been deep in the framework for years. Pulse is designed to integrate seamlessly with the Omnata product suite.
Monitorial Pulse — Native App
A ground-up rebuild as a Snowflake Native App. One-click install from the Snowflake Marketplace, 200+ monitors across five pillars, rules-based routing, suppression, and lifecycle management. Built to run entirely inside your Snowflake account.
What we believe
Own What You Build
If your pipeline is unhealthy at 2am, you should know before your stakeholders do. Ownership isn't a buzzword — it's how great teams operate.
Measure Before You State
We don't make claims we can't back with architecture. Every feature ships with the evidence that it works at scale.
Accessible by Default
A one-person data team and a 50-person enterprise platform team should both find Monitorial indispensable. Same philosophy, different scale.
Stay Inside the Perimeter
Runs inside your Snowflake account. External connections are opt-in — you control what leaves and where it goes.
Founders
Our team care deeply about Observability on Snowflake and want to share and inspire others to be as passionate as we are.
Jon
Co-founder
Software engineer turned architect with more than 20 years of experience designing and delivering technology solutions across the UK and New Zealand. Built a career spanning software development, databases, cloud platforms, enterprise architecture, and technical leadership, working with organisations ranging from startups to large enterprises and public sector agencies.
Microsoft-certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Developer Associate, and Azure Administrator Associate, with a passion for turning complex technology challenges into practical, scalable outcomes.
Simon
Co-founder
Started database programming in 1989. Spent the first 20+ years focused on SQL Server and the Microsoft BI stack — earning MCITP, MCP Azure Big Data, and eventually BIML Hero status and co-authored a book on BIML.
Moved to Snowflake in 2018 and has been working on and with Snowflake every day since: SnowPro Core (2019), Advanced Architect (2019), Advanced Data Engineer (2020), Snowflake Data Hero (2020), and first intake of the SnowPro Certification SME programme (2020).
Why Snowflake-native
We built Monitorial as a Snowflake Native App for a reason: it runs inside your Snowflake account. External connections are opt-in — you control what leaves and where it goes. Install from the Snowflake Marketplace and start monitoring immediately.
When Snowflake ships a new feature, we're asking “what can go wrong here?” before most teams have even turned it on. When we see a new billing gotcha, we ship a monitor for it — before you find out the expensive way.
“You don't know what you don't know. We narrow that gap full-time.”
Ready to own your Snowflake platform?
Free tier available — unlimited Tripwire & Threshold monitors, 1 destination.