Microsoft and Databricks deepen partnership for modern, cloud-native analytics

In May, we introduced the Microsoft Intelligent Data platform which deeply integrates our databases, analytics, BI and data governance products into a unified platform. This platform, which is also integrated with the Microsoft Cloud, enables seamless experience and intuitive collaboration for Developers, DBAs, Data Engineers, Data Scientists, Business Analysts and Data Officers. The platform enables customers to “do more with less”, by helping them add layers of intelligence to their applications, unlock predictive insights and drive relevant action, and govern their entire data estate.

Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform

Databricks has been a key partner for us in delivering a cloud native platform for Analytics in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. Today, I am pleased to share that we have further strengthened our partnership with Databricks to evolve our Analytics platform to an Open and Governed Data Lakehouse foundation. This foundation will enable our customers to unify their most demanding Business Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence investments on a single data foundation for analytics viz. an open and governed data lakehouse. The foundation will also enable customers to responsibly democratize their analytics data products to accelerate digital transformation applications across their organizations. 

“Databricks is a key partner for Microsoft, and together, we are delivering a modern, cloud-native data foundation in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform for the most demanding analytics and machine learning applications,” - Scott Guthrie, EVP, Cloud + AI, Microsoft. 

Microsoft and Databricks have partnered to build this foundation in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform by integrating their hallmark capabilities to deliver an integrated solution for our customers.  

Core to the foundation is the Open and Governed Data Lakehouse, a unified and cloud native data fabric capable of serving business intelligence, machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads at enterprise and cloud scales, without requiring organizations to invest in building, integrating, and operating point data fabrics for each.  

Analytics in Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform

This foundation is built by integrating the hallmark analytics capabilities in Microsoft’s Azure Synapse Analytics and Databricks, as well by integrating the governance foundations in Microsoft Purview and Databricks Unity Catalog to enable a single pane experience for Data and Analytics Governance in Microsoft Purview. The components of the integrated analytics foundation include:  

• Azure Data Factory in Azure Synapse Analytics for orchestrating data integration pipelines to integrate data from across hybrid, multi-cloud, SaaS, and legacy enterprise data source systems 
• Azure Data Explorer in Azure Synapse Analytics for real-time streaming analytics  
• Azure Databricks for building an open standard data lakehouse using the Delta format
• Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Databricks for machine learning
• Azure AI and Databricks MLFlow for MLOps
• Azure Synapse SQL and Databricks SQL for serverless SQL analytics
• Azure Synapse SQL for a Data Warehouse modality for data serving
• Power BI for Business Intelligence
• Microsoft Purview and Databricks Unity Catalog Federation for Unified Data Governance in Purview spanning Operational, Analytics, and ML/AI data assets on the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform 

“This announcement between Databricks and Microsoft is a significant step forward in helping customers adopt an open, well governed data lakehouse on Azure with the entirety of the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform capabilities. More than ever, customers are able to quickly and easily unify their data, analytics, and AI with a simple and open approach.” - Ali Ghodsi, Co-founder and CEO of Databricks

We, Microsoft and Databricks, are thrilled to be able to partner in deeply integrating our complementary strengths and capabilities, to deliver an open and governed analytics foundation in the Microsoft Intelligent Platform, to serve the most demanding analytics investments of our customers with unparalleled productivity, performance, and cost efficiencies that will enable our customers to do and achieve more with less. In a recent benchmark study, implementing an end-to-end analytics solution on Azure was up to 49% more cost efficient than on a top competitor cloud.

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Microsoft and Databricks Partnership

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