Altron Karabina, which positions itself as the country’s leading Microsoft data partner, and Databricks, which positions itself as the world’s fastest growing data platform provider, have partnered to enable Altron Karabina to provide Azure Databricks services in South Africa and internationally.
Paul Morgan, Head: Data, Analytics and AI at Altron Karabina, says while Databricks is available across cloud providers in other markets, in South Africa it is currently only deployed in Azure. “Databricks has a strong relationship with Microsoft globally. Naturally, with Altron Karabina now becoming a partner, we are able to offer our customers who already make use of our leading Microsoft expertise, access to the power and functionality of Databricks.”
Azure Databricks is a fully managed first-party service that enables an open data lakehouse in Azure. With a lakehouse built on top of an open data lake, users can quickly light up a variety of analytical workloads while allowing for common governance across your entire data estate and enables key use cases including data science, data engineering, machine learning, AI and SQL-based analytics.
Morgan says Altron Karabina is seeing Databricks become an increasingly important part of its solution on the Azure cloud, which already includes Azure Synapse Analytics. “Simply put, you don't need to buy Databricks on a separate contract. You simply use your Microsoft Azure cloud contract to include Databricks as an additional Azure service. There are not many products that have that deep integration into Azure. Companies are attracted to the Databricks platform as it allows them flexibility – although focused on the Microsoft Azure cloud here, internationally it is a multicloud solution.”
Morgan says the Databricks partnership was a logical progression as Altron Karabina continues working with partners and clients to offer industry-leading solutions in data and artificial intelligence.
Richard Wylie, Senior Director, IMEA Region Leader for Databricks, says the partnership with Altron Karabina will enable Databricks to add value to customers' digital journey in South Africa specifically, and more broadly in other markets where Altron Karabina provides services. “We choose our partners carefully and are confident that Altron Karabina, as a leader in data and AI, will expand our reach in the markets where it operates.”
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