by Angela Guess

A recent press release states, “Databricks, provider of the leading Unified Analytics Platform  powered by Apache Spark™, today announced general availability of Microsoft Azure Databricks. Azure Databricks is Databricks’ Unified Analytics Platform offered as an integrated service within the Azure cloud platform. Organizations from around the globe using Azure Databricks are now deriving value from their Big Data and realizing the promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).”

The release goes on, “Designed by Databricks in collaboration with Microsoft, Azure Databricks combines the best of Databricks’ Spark-based cloud service and Azure to help customers accelerate innovation with one-click set up, streamlined workflows and an interactive workspace that enables collaboration between data scientists, data engineers, and business analysts. The integrated service provides Databricks’ Unified Analytics Platform integrated with the Azure cloud platform, encompassing the Azure Portal; Azure Active Directory; and other data services on Azure, including Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Lake Store; and Microsoft Power BI.”

Sunil Bondalapati, director of Information Technology at Lennox International, commented, “At Lennox International, we supply WiFi enabled thermostats. With Microsoft Azure Databricks, we moved from 60 percent efficiency to 94 percent efficiency on detecting switch failures. Using Azure Databricks has opened the flood gates to all kinds of new use cases inside Lennox International. In our previous process, 15 devices in 15 homes, which create 2 million records, took 6 hours to process. With Azure Databricks, we are able to process 25,000 homes – 10 billion records – in 14 minutes.”

Read more at Globe Newswire.

Photo credit: Databricks