Companies have become more careful about harnessing their data resources and data platforms In response, they are retooling toward increased versatility and sweeping integrations to invalidate silos.

Databricks Inc. and Snowflake Inc. have both bought into the unification idea but are approaching it slightly differently, according to Sanjeev Mohan (pictured), principal at SanjMo.

“Eventually, the business requirements are the same, which is a unified, consolidated way to access data, but the way they’re approaching are totally different,” he said. “Snowflake is primarily about Data Warehouse, Data Cloud [and] applications. Here the message is data and AI, as the conference name says. So, unification is extremely important here.”

Mohan spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at the Databricks Data + AI Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Databricks’ blueprint as it unifies data and artificial intelligence within its infrastructure.

The Databricks angle

For Databricks, the unification theme extends across data/metadata, AI, Lakehouse Federation and Unity Catalog as a whole. These efforts exist to establish congruence across machine learning models and data tables, reports and notebooks, Mohan added.

“You see [the] unification of Lakehouse Federation where you can now go access PostgreSQL, Snowflake, Redshift — and you see unification at Unity Catalog where you can now access your models, your tables, your reports, your notebooks, so that’s the big difference I see here,” he said.

More specifically, Databricks recently lifted the lid on Lakehouse Federation capabilities directly accessible within Unity Catalog, allowing organizations to erect data meshes that are scalable, performant and with unified governance. Additionally, Unity Catalog’s security capabilities — including tags, data lineage and row/column level access controls — extend to external data sources.

“That Unity Catalog came a bit late in the game — only last year is the first time we saw it,” Mohan explained. “That democratization is now possible because of Unity Catalog because it’s becoming the single pane of glass for all personas to unify.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Databricks Data + AI Summit:

Photo: SiliconANGLE