Databricks acquires BladeBridge to aid data warehouse migrations

Data lakehouse provider Databricks has acquired data platform modernization software provider BladeBridge for an undisclosed sum to help its new customers move from rival data warehouses, such as Teradata, Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, and Microsoft SQL Server, to its lakehouse built atop Databricks SQL.

The New York-headquartered firm will provide enterprise customers with insights into the scope of conversion, configurable code transpiling, LLM-powered conversion, and easy validation of migrated systems, Databricks top executives wrote in a blog post.

How does it work?

BladeBridge, which has four major products in the form of an Analyzer, a Converter, the Data Recon module, and a Studio, said it expected enterprises will save “months of work by automatically building a summary of all extract, transform, load (ETL) and database assets in just a few hours.”

The Analyzer provides a full report of the migration’s scope and complexity, while also automatically conducting query testing between the rival database and Databricks SQL to identify discrepancies for early remediation, Databricks and BladeBrigde explained in a joint statement.

After conducting an analysis, the Converter starts converting the rival data warehouse into Databricks SQL by using a configuration-driven approach that is expected to account for differences between the legacy architecture and Databricks SQL.

“The approach ensures that customers retain full ownership of the conversion patterns, so configurations can always be updated if new requirements emerge at later stages of the migration,” the companies said, adding that BladeBridge’s  AI-driven conversions account for all legacy ETL, SQL, and other code.

In order to accelerate the conversion process with configuration instructions, BladeBridge uses an iterative process, the companies said.

“When unit tests fail for any component, the configuration files are simply adapted to resolve the errors,” they explained.

Why did Databricks acquire BladeBridge?

Databricks wants to increase its revenue by offering its customers lower cost and lower risk in the process of migrating their legacy data warehouses to its own proprietary platform.

BladeBridge claims that it provides an AI-based approach to help migrate to at least 20 different data warehouses and ETL tools 50% faster than traditional approaches.

BladeBridge has strong ties with system integrators, such as Accenture, Capgemini, Celebal Technologies, and Tredence, with proven deployments across “hundreds of customers.”

According to Databricks, BladeBridge has also helped several enterprises move to its platform, including Thomas International and VGZ.

While Thomas International used BladeBridge to move from Snowflake to Databricks’ Data Intelligence Platform to gain a 40% increase in development productivity, VGZ’s migration to Databricks via BladeBridge helped it achieve a 30% improvement in time to market for new data products.

Databricks’ future roadmap and plans

Without specifying a particular date, the company said that it plans to make BladeBridge and its related products freely available to enterprises and partners.

Databricks also has plans to scale BladeBridge expertise to other system integrators, it said, adding that it sees the acquisition contributing to its goal of reaching a $3 billion revenue run rate and being free cash flow positive in the fourth quarter ending January 31, 2025.

The acquisition of BladeBridge comes just after Databricks closed its $15 billion Series J financing round that saw new and existing investors, such as Temasek and QIA invest $10 billion. As part of that round, the company closed a $5.25 billion credit facility led by JPMorgan Chase alongside Barclays, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.

The company, after the close of the funding round, had said that it would use the new capital towards building new AI products, acquisitions, and expansion of its international go-to-market operations, while also providing liquidity.

The lakehouse provider, which is currently valued at $62 billion, has been acquiring companies to expand its offerings.

Last year in March, the company acquired Boston-based Lilac AI to help enterprises explore and use their unstructured data for building generative AI-based applications. In June 2023, Databricks acquired LLM and model-training software provider MosaicML for $1.3 billion to boost its generative AI offerings.