VentureBeat reports that data lakehouse and artificial intelligence firm Databricks has acquired data governance platform provider Okera for an undisclosed amount.
The purchase is part of Databricks' efforts to integrate artificial intelligence functionality into its own data governance offering, Unity Catalog, said Reynold Xin, cofounder and chief architect of Databricks.
By bringing on the talented Okera team and leveraging their domain expertise, well accelerate the Unity Catalog roadmap and provide best-in-class governance for the lakehouse, Xin said.
Okera leverages AI to implement attribute-based and intent-based access policies on all users data, analytics, and AI assets. Xin adds that the Okera-Databricks combination also enables automatic tracing of data lineage down to the column level, giving users a holistic view of their data estate across clouds.
Most importantly, Databricks' purchase also grants it access to a new piece of technology being developed by Okera, called isolation technology, which enables support for arbitrary workloads while enforcing governance control with no impact on performance, Xin said.