Splunk's recent partnership with Snowflake highlights the growing trend of data federation, where data is queried directly from its existing location rather than being duplicated, a strategy aimed at reducing costs and enhancing efficiency. This approach, already utilized by platforms like Snowflake, BigQuery, and Redshift, is now being embraced for business and security data by Splunk, which recently announced federated search capabilities with Snowflake at their .conf event. Meanwhile, Imply Lumi extends this concept to observability data, focusing on handling high-velocity workloads such as logs and metrics with features like cost-efficient storage and fast query performance. The announcement underscores the industry's shift away from siloed data toward more integrated systems, allowing businesses to access and act on unified business and operational insights. While Splunk's federated search for Snowflake will be widely available in mid-2026, Imply Lumi offers immediate availability for those seeking federation solutions now, emphasizing its compatibility with existing tools and infrastructures.