Databricks Buys Tabular

San Francisco-based Databricks has announced the acquisition of Tabular, bringing together the creators and providers of the two main 'lakehouse' systems for data warehousing, integration and management.

Tabular is based in San Jose, CA, and was founded in 2021 by Ryan Blue, Daniel Weeks and Jason Reid, former Netflix employees and the creators of the open source data 'lakehouse' format Apache Iceberg. Databricks is the originator of the Linux Foundation Delta Lake, the other main 'lakehouse' system, and operates the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, helping more than 60% of the Fortune 500 to 'take control of their data and put it to work with AI'. Reports suggest all three Tabular founders will now be working with Databricks.

Lakehouse architecture aims to democratize access to data, contrasting with other data warehouses where only a proprietary SQL engine can read, write or share data, often requiring it to be copied and exported in order to be used by other applications. Databricks' Delta Lake UniForm software already provides a measure of interoperability and compatibility between Iceberg and Delta Lake but following the acquisition it says it has big ambitions to extend this, converging the two formats.

Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO at Databricks says that since his company pioneered it four years ago 'the world has embraced the lakehouse architecture', and that the two firms 'will work with the open-source community to bring the two formats closer to each other over time, increasing openness, and reducing silos and friction for customers'. He adds: 'Last year, we announced Delta Lake UniForm to bring interoperability to these two formats, and we're thrilled to bring together the foremost leaders in open data lakehouse formats to make UniForm the best way to unify your data for every workload'.

Blue, who is CEO at Tabular, comments: 'With Tabular joining Databricks, we intend to build the best data management platform based on open lakehouse formats so that companies don't have to worry about picking the 'right' format or getting locked into proprietary data formats'.

The proposed acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in Databricks' second fiscal quarter of 2024. Financial terms were not disclosed but reports on CNBC suggest Databricks paid more than $1 billion.

Web sites: www.databricks.com and www.tabular.io .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.