Salesforce and Databricks announce a mutual integration to make moving data between their data platforms easier.

Salesforce kicked off its Dreamforce conference with deeper integration with Databricks. Data can now be exchanged more easily between the Salesforce Data Cloud and the Databricks Data Lakehouse. This integration runs in two directions, which is not an unimportant detail.

BYOL

Of course, the announcement also contains a few trendy terms. The integration follows a “zero ETL” principle or “bring your own lake”. This means no tools are required to extract your data from one source and transfer it to another. To this end, Salesforce is introducing two new functionalities in the Data Cloud: Data transfer And Data Federation.

Thanks to the former, you have direct access to your Salesforce data via the connected Databricks platform. Data Federation offers the opposite solution and will be introduced at a later date.

Best of both worlds

The connection between Salesforce Data Cloud and Databricks is interesting for both platforms. The goal of the Salesforce Data Cloud is to gain a 360° view of your customers. The more unique data you can feed into the platform, the more comprehensive and accurate the picture will be.

In addition to data storage, Databricks’ data lakehouse platform can also lay the foundation for the development of AI and machine learning models. Based on Salesforce data, companies can develop models that are trained on company-specific data so that they can be used for very specific use cases.

Databricks will not be the only partner to receive an invitation to the Dreamforce event. A few days ago, Salesforce also announced an integration with Snowflake for data exchange. Such collaborations are not an unnecessary luxury, as today there are a large number of data platforms that cannot always communicate with each other. This creates silos and Salesforce likes to break them down.