Tabular

Tabular was an independent data platform and "open table store" built by the original creators of Apache Iceberg. Its fully managed SaaS product let organizations maintain a single storage layer that could be accessed simultaneously by multiple compute engines and frameworks, including Apache Spark, Trino, Flink and Snowflake, and it bundled integrated ingestion, automated performance optimization and centralized security. The stated goal was to address problems data engineers and data scientists face with the limitations of existing data infrastructure.

Apache Iceberg, the open source foundation of the product, was developed by Ryan Blue and Daniel Weeks while they worked at Netflix and was subsequently donated to the Apache Software Foundation. Iceberg and Databricks' Linux Foundation Delta Lake emerged as the two leading open source lakehouse table formats; both are based on Apache Parquet but became incompatible due to independent development. Blue served as Iceberg PMC Chair and Weeks as an Iceberg PMC member.

In June 2024, Databricks acquired Tabular with the stated aim of bringing the Iceberg and Delta Lake formats toward interoperability — in the short term through Delta Lake UniForm, which provides interoperability across Delta Lake, Iceberg and Hudi and supports the Iceberg REST catalog interface, and in the long term through convergence on a single common standard. Analysts characterized the deal as adding Iceberg support to Databricks, giving Databricks influence in the Iceberg community, and as a competitive move against Snowflake, announced during Snowflake's user conference.

Founding story

Tabular was founded in 2021 by three Netflix alumni: Ryan Blue (Co-Founder and CEO, previously in data science and engineering at Netflix), Daniel Weeks (Co-Founder and Head of Engineering, previously Engineering Manager for Big Data Compute at Netflix) and Jason Reid (Co-Founder, previously Director of Data Science & Engineering at Netflix). Blue and Weeks had created the Apache Iceberg project while at Netflix and donated it to the Apache Software Foundation, and the company was formed to commercialize a platform around that format.

Business model

Tabular sold a fully managed SaaS data platform built on the open source Apache Iceberg table format. Rather than a proprietary end-to-end warehouse, it offered a storage layer with integrated ingestion, automated performance optimization and centralized security that customers could query with the compute engines of their choice. Both Databricks and Tabular are described as companies founded to commercialize open source technologies created by their founders.

Fully managed SaaS offering of an open table store; specific pricing terms are not disclosed in the available sources.

Traction

As of July 2023, Tabular claimed its central table store could reduce cloud storage costs by up to 50%. The company had raised $37 million in venture funding prior to the acquisition. No customer counts or revenue figures are disclosed in the available sources.

Latest developments

Databricks announced on June 4, 2024 that it had agreed to acquire Tabular, with the transaction expected to close in Databricks' fiscal second quarter ending July 31, 2024; a June 7, 2024 blog update stated the acquisition had been completed. Ryan Blue, Daniel Weeks and Jason Reid were reported to be joining Databricks. Post-acquisition plans included improving Iceberg support across the Databricks platform and broadening Delta Lake UniForm, which became generally available on June 3, 2024.