News
After Oracle Deal, AWS Strengthens Databricks AI Partnership
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has lately focused on shoring up its data-centric partnerships, including fostering AI functionality as it plays catch-up with GenAI cloud leader Microsoft -- not to mention Google Cloud, working hard to stay relevant.
Last week, Databricks announced a strategic collaboration with AWS to accelerate the development of custom models built with Databricks Mosaic AI on AWS. Databricks is utilizing AWS Trainium chips to enhance the training and serving of its Mosaic AI models on AWS. The companies said this partnership enables joint customers to use Mosaic AI for tasks like pretraining, fine-tuning, and serving large language models (LLMs) using their private data, while benefiting from AWS's scale, performance, and security. Additionally, the collaboration includes new integrations for Databricks in the AWS Marketplace, streamlining access to AI capabilities.
[Click on image for larger view.] Databricks in AWS Marketplace (source: AWS Marketplace).
Databricks in June announced new capabilities for its Mosaic AI said to help customers build production-quality GenAI applications. Among other things it introduced several new capabilities to help customers deploy enterprise-ready compound AI systems using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and boosted agentic AI, one of the hottest areas of GenAI right now.
"Our collaboration with Databricks unlocks the potential for customers to drive real value from their data using generative AI," said Matt Garman, CEO of AWS. "By using AWS Trainium to power Mosaic AI, Databricks will make it cost-effective for customers to build and deploy generative AI applications on top of their analytics workflows, regardless of their industry or use case. This powerful combination will allow businesses of all sizes to gain valuable insights from their data, helping customers innovate faster by focusing on what truly matters most for their business."
Databricks, meanwhile, crowing it was AWS' first cloud partner, noted these highlights about the relationship:
- Custom Model Optimization & Enhanced Security: Databricks and AWS will collaborate on the development of custom models built with Mosaic AI using AWS Trainium chips to improve cost and performance for training and running LLMs. AWS Trainium benefits from the AWS Nitro System, a collection of hardware and software components designed to provide high performance, availability, privacy and security for cloud-based workloads.
- Migration and Modernization for Generative AI: Databricks and AWS will work with systems integrator (SI) partners to migrate data estates running in on-premises data centers onto AWS and accelerate the modernization of their data platforms.
- Tailored Industry Solutions and Accelerators: As the demand for generative AI grows across industries like Media and Entertainment and Financial Services, Databricks and AWS will continue to develop joint industry solutions that help customers solve challenges within their organization and drive innovation.
- Enhanced Ease of Use: The two companies are making it easier for customers to adopt and run Databricks on AWS through new integrations on AWS Marketplace, including simplified onboarding and configuration and serverless compute powered by AWS.
- Joint Generative AI Go-to-Market Programs: Alongside its SI partners, Databricks will build technical solutions and implementation resources to help customers identify generative AI workloads and on-premises migrations that can be optimized with Databricks on AWS.
- Expanding Co-Marketing Initiatives: Databricks and AWS will continue to invest in strategic joint marketing programs, including each company's flagship industry events. This work will also include co-branded technical resources and developer-focused events designed to allow customers to prototype generative AI solutions.
The Databricks news comes a month after Oracle announced a strategic partnership with AWS with the launch of Oracle Database@AWS. That new cloud offering helps customers access Oracle Autonomous Database on dedicated infrastructure and Oracle Exadata Database Service within AWS.
The two companies will provide a unified experience -- simplified database administration, billing and unified customer support -- between the AWS cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
"With direct access to Oracle Exadata Database Service on AWS, including Oracle Autonomous Database on dedicated infrastructure and workloads running on Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle Database@AWS allows customers to bring together all of their enterprise data to drive breakthrough innovation," Oracle said. "The new offering provides a low latency network connection between Oracle databases and applications on AWS. This allows customers to benefit from Oracle Autonomous Database, a fully automated and managed Oracle Database service, and the performance, availability, security, and cost-effectiveness of Oracle Exadata Database Service, while enjoying the security, agility, flexibility, and sustainability benefits provided by AWS."
It appears that AWS, which many pundits say was slow to join the cloud-based enterprise AI race led by Microsoft and then joined by Google, might be taking the long road by solidifying the base on which all AI runs: data. Stay tuned to see what's next in data-centric AI in the cloud.