puts new pressure on competitors such as Snowflake and Confluent as cloud data management rises in importance as a technology necessary for AI initiatives.
According to our interviews with technology experts and end users, Tabular gives Databricks the strategic upper hand on an open-source project known as Apache Iceberg, one of the most popular open-source tools for managing how data is shared among cloud infrastructure, applications, and on-premises infrastructure. Iceberg is seen as increasingly important as a tool to help manage data used to feed AI applications.
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Databricks is one of the most closely watched pre-IPO companies in Silicon Valley. It recently started reporting revenue to give more visibility into the company’s operations. In March it, a 50% leap from the previous period. It’s also been aquiring AI companies such as Lilac AI, and it has recently introduced a slew of new AI tools. It’s estimated to have a valuation approaching $50 billion.
This has proven to be a delicate operation in the past, but it is one that has been successfully negotiated by data companies such as MongoDB and Amazon’s Elastic container service, which both converted a strong open-source base into a lucrative commercial operation. "Iceberg allows Databricks to have storage and data management for data that sits outside their control so it increases their total addressable market,” said Rikin Shah, co-founder of“Now that Databricks owns Tabular, they can provide more value for data processing and storage,” Shah said. “For Databricks this is a big deal, they are saying not all data lives in Snowflake and Delta Lake. If they integrate with Tabular they could be the leader.