Databricks Increases AWS Partner–Led Channel by 300% Year Over Year

Databricks expanded its AWS Partner–led customer base by 300 percent in 2019 and again year over year in 2020. The company, which accelerates data analytics and machine learning workloads in the cloud, became an AWS Data and Analytics Competency Partner and joined the APN Global Startup Program to gain credibility as well as co-selling and go-to-market support. As an AWS Partner, Databricks has increased its revenue and customer base and can help customers become faster and more efficient.

Databricks was founded in 2013 by seven PhD candidates at the University of California, Berkeley, including the creators of Apache Spark, an open-source unified analytics engine for large-scale data processing. The founders wanted to use cloud technologies to help data engineers and data scientists solve big, challenging data problems. The company looked to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help scale. “The founders wrote the product to run on AWS for AWS,” says Justin Fenton, senior director of AWS alliances at Databricks.

To gain promotional support—including increased visibility for customers and AWS teams, opportunities to engage with customers, and go-to-market resources—the startup joined the AWS Partner Network and became an AWS Advanced Technology Partner. The Databricks workforce has since grown to more than 1,700 employees dedicated to migrating workloads to the cloud and building data analytics systems to help customers make better-informed decisions and be faster and more efficient.

Databricks also joined the AWS Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program, which helps ISVs that have software solutions that run or integrate with AWS, drive new business and accelerate sales cycles by connecting the participating ISVs with the AWS Sales organization.

In 2015, Databricks became an AWS Data and Analytics Competency Partner to gain access to AWS managed services for data lakes and analytics and to help its customers build data and analytics applications in the cloud. By 2017, the company had grown into a software enterprise with a global footprint and success in the healthcare and life sciences, media and entertainment, and financial services sectors. It also joined the APN Global Startup Program, an invite-only, go-to-market program built to support mid- and late-stage startups that have raised institutional funding, achieved product-market fit, and are ready to scale.

Although the scalable, flexible cloud is ideal for large data processing, 90 percent of data and analytics workloads still aren’t in the cloud. To help companies take advantage of their untapped data, Databricks offers an open, modern lakehouse for data analytics, machine learning, and data lake optimization. It also helps legacy businesses migrate from on-premises systems to data lakes on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.

Databricks helps legacy businesses migrate to the cloud, conducting workshops to explain AWS analytics and machine learning services and enabling businesses to test its products. The company expanded its AWS Partner–led customer base by 300 percent in 2019 and again year over year in 2020. Second-year revenues increased 1,200 percent in 2019 and over 400 percent year over year in 2020.

Databricks helped its customer DoorDash create a marketing automation system to manage some of the marketing team’s weekly budget. As the marketing team continues to roll out the system to more channels and campaigns, Databricks and DoorDash expect to lower marketing costs by 10–30 percent while reaching the same number of customers.

As an AWS Partner, Databricks will continue to go after bigger targets in the years to come. “Co-selling has been a key part of the journey,” says Fenton. “AWS is investing in teams to improve the co-sell experience for AWS Independent Software Vendors, and we’ve seen a dramatic improvement.”