Databricks $1.6bn funding to fuel lakehouse innovation

Data and AI pioneer Databricks has plans to roll out its ground-breaking data lakehouse vision to more enterprise customers following a $1.6bn funding injection.  

 

The Series H funding saw investors like Amazon Web Services (AWS), CapitalG and Microsoft put fresh capital into the San Francisco-based company, giving it a valuation of $38 billion.

 

Databricks said its data lakehouse architecture is aimed at enterprises that struggle with maintaining both data lakes and data warehouses. The data silos that can result often prevent a single source of truth, and maintaining them comes both at a high cost and a reduced speed of decision-making. A lakehouse is a new type of platform that implements similar data structures and data management features to those in a data warehouse, but directly on the low-cost, flexible type of storage used for cloud data lakes. CIOs get the reliability, governance and performance of a data warehouse at the same time as leveraging the data lakes that most organizations already store their data in. This allows them to build analytics platforms on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to support every data and analytics workload in a single, unified location. This new AI-powered architecture allows traditional analytics and data science to co-exist in the same system.

 

“We have a vision for an open and unified approach to data and AI on any cloud,” said Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO of Databricks. “Now we want to make more organizations successful in their move to the cloud and accelerate adoption of the lakehouse architecture.”

 

Here are two examples from different verticals of enterprises that have already deployed this new model:

  • Drug development giant AstraZeneca was experiencing difficulty with tapping into all of the scientific information available to it faster than the pace of new data coming in. It needed a platform that enabled them to build scalable, performant data pipelines that feed machine learning models designed to help their scientists make targeted decisions. With Databricks, it is now able to leverage data and machine learning to build a recommendation engine that empowers scientists to more easily uncover new novel drugs quicker, cheaper and more effectively
  • Oil giant Shell also wanted a way to make better use of data and AI to improve operational efficiencies, drive customer engagement, and tap into innovations like renewable energy. Held back by large volumes of data, Shell chose Databricks to be one of the foundational components of its Shell.ai platform. Today, Databricks empowers hundreds of Shell’s engineers, scientists and analysts to innovate together as part of their ambition to deliver cleaner energy solutions more rapidly and efficiently. “As an industry, we are going through a massive transition,” explained Dan Jeavons, GM of data science at Shell. “Digital technology is absolutely core to making our existing business more effective and efficient. As the industry continues to expand into new areas of energy that are more sustainable and reduce environmental impact, data and digital technology are now table stakes.”

This event will be of interest to data professionals:

Network & Data Center Security – NetEvents

 

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Book of the Month*

The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck

By Dr Christian Busch
Serendipity is an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. To other people it looks like “good luck”, but it is more the ability to recognise and seize an opportunity, rather than have good fortune thrust upon one. Finding a wallet stuffed with money on the conference room floor is good luck, whereas holding it up and asking if anyone has lost their wallet might be the beginning of a valuable friendship – that would be serendipity.

Chance encounters, or strokes of fortune, feature in countless stories of business success. This book looks beneath the surface, reveals and teaches the mindset that can transform pure chance into opportunity. The author is director of the Global Economy Program at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and a lecturer at the London School of Economics.

Serendipity is an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. To other people it looks like “good luck”, but it is more the ability to recognise and seize an opportunity, rather than have good fortune thrust upon one. Finding a wallet stuffed with money on the conference room floor is good luck, whereas holding it up and asking if anyone has lost their wallet might be the beginning of a valuable friendship – that would be serendipity.

The author says “This is a book about the interactions of coincidence, human ambition and imagination”. In the above example: finding the wallet is the coincidence; ambition is the desire to make something of the discovery; add imagination and you open up a whole menu of possibilities: from spending spree to earning a reputation for honesty – or even making a wealthy friend.

Business is typically forged on human ambition and imagination, but early success often feeds an appetite for control – and “control freaks” can be blind to the opportunities thrown up by the unexpected. They only see chance events as distractions. If plans go awry, they may blame the failure on “bad luck” rather than admit their own inflexible attitude.

The author himself admits to being “a German who is used to planning” and prone to feel anxious when something unexpected happens. That makes him an ideal teacher, because he has worked hard to discover and analyse the mindset that enables one to “connect the dots” and cultivate serendipity. He presents a goldmine of examples from science, business and life where an apparent mishap or failure lead to a breakthrough.

Indeed, studies suggest that around 50% of major scientific breakthroughs emerge as the result of accidents or coincidences. A well-known example is Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin, launching the whole field of antibiotics. Other examples include X-rays, nylon, microwave ovens, rubber, Velcro, Viagra and Post-it Notes – where would we be without these!

The book goes beyond the ability to recognise and respond to opportunities in chaos, but the subtitle – The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck – is actually a bit misleading. True, he does show ways to develop better fortune, but it would be better to call it “inviting” or “encouraging” good luck. For example, he suggests better ways to start a conversation with a stranger – ways that will make it more likely to lead to chance connections or shared interests.

The publishers may have chosen the word “creating” to make the book appeal to the human desire to control – for control freaks are exactly the readership that would benefit the most from this book’s wisdom and practical advice.

For the rest of us, it offers a great way to rediscover the sense of play that is so important in life – and too often lost in business.

 

“Following the success of The Serendipity Mindset hardback, a paperback edition has also now been launched under the title “Connect the Dots”.

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