Databricks launches on Google Cloud with new partnership

Cloud-based data engineering tool Databricks will now integrate with Google Cloud thanks to a new partnership between the companies.

This means that joint customers can create ‘data lake houses’ (a combo of a data warehouse and a data lake) capable of data engineering, data science, machine learning, and analytics on Google Cloud’s network as well as, or instead of, AWS and Azure.

Databricks on Google Cloud will integrate with Google BigQuery's open platform and leverage Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), enabling customers to deploy Databricks in a fully containerised cloud environment for the first time. 

The integration with BigQuery will allow businesses to cross-leverage a Databricks lake house with BigQuery for analytics.

This means users will be able to extend AI-driven insights across data lakes, data warehouses, and multiple business intelligence tools, use pre-built connectors to seamlessly integrate Databricks with BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage, Looker and Pub/Sub, more easily deploy AI training models built in Databricks using AI Platform Prediction.

“We're seeing a lot more demand for customers moving towards containerization and so from our perspective, this gives us a real differentiation,” Rhody Burton, head of cloud partnerships and alliances for Google Cloud said.

“We can help those enterprise customers really get more value out of their data strategies. A lot of them are placing those bets on Google Cloud and we really feel like this is going to help them with speed to market of their data strategy.”

Databricks was created by the minds behind ApacheSpark to provide a solution to the growing disparity between the places that data is stored and where scientists and engineers need it to be to draw out value.

Databricks ANZ and South East Asia vice president Greg Taylor said the company’s open-source heritage played a large part in its go-to-market strategy.

“A big focus here is being able to provide the Databricks service on top of the open-source offerings that have been in the market. Sometimes customers love using open source as a starting point, but they find it a little bit more difficult to manage. Very quickly the pedigree that Databricks brings to market and the GCP starts to come together. That's why this sort of offering, from a customer perspective, gives them that off that managed service capability.”

Burton added that Google also saw the value of open source as a “fuel for innovation”.

“Not only are we partnering very closely with Databricks to provide these services, but we're also looking to our joint partners who are also providing those services out to customers as well," she said.

It is partners' deep industry knowledge and Databricks' ability to build on top of their innovation that drives the company’s success, according to ANZ country head Bede Hackney.

“Our top verticals are financial services, retail, government, energy and utilities, and digital natives and with more than 6000 customers across those verticals and more, we start to see some commonality in the problems that customers are starting trying to solve," Hackney said.

“In addition to our ecosystem partners, we're also building actionable solution accelerators where, if we see a common thread, we can pull together a generic vanilla version of a solution, our customers can download that code, customise it for their environment, and radically improve their time to value.”

A range of joint partners have committed to ensuring integrations and expertise with Databricks on Google Cloud, and Databricks is actively seeking partners in the region who have compelling use cases for the platform.