Databricks Reviews

I would like to see the integration between Databricks and MLflow improved. It is quite hard to train multiple models in parallel in the distributed fashions. You hit rate limits on the clients very fast.

I have been using Databricks for three years.

I would rate the stability of this solution a nine out of 10, with one being not stable and 10 being very stable.

I would rate the scalability of this solution an eight out of 10, with one being not scalable and 10 being very scalable.

There are three people using this solution in our organization.

I would rate the available customer service a three. It's worth mentioning that this is Microsoft and not Databricks itself. I haven't spoken to Databricks people directly, but I know the people who have and they have been a lot more pleased.

Negative

I would rate their pricing plan a six (on a scale of one to 10, with one being cheap and 10 being expensive). I think the prices could be lowered a little bit.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight out of 10, with one being quite poor and 10 being excellent. It is fast, it's scalable, and it does the job it needs to do.

We use this solution for the Customer Data Platform(CDP). My company works in the MarTech space and usually we implement custom CDP.

The Delta Lake data type has been the most useful part of this solution. Delta Lake is an opensource data type and it was implemented and invented by Databricks. It is the most important element of the solution. Databricks also offers exceptional performance and scalability. 

The data visualization for this solution could be improved. They have started to roll out a data visualization tool inside Databricks but it is in the early stages. It's not comparable to a solution like Power BI, Luca, or Tableau.

In a future release, we would like to have a better ETL designer tool to assist in the way we move data from one place to another.

We have been using this solution for four years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The initial setup is very easy. It is a managed solution inside Azure so you just need to search for Databricks. There are a couple of pages to follow in the setup wizard and Databricks is up and running.

We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data. 

When we first started using Databricks in 2018, there were not many comarable solutions to consider. Right now there are many solutions to consider including Snowflake, Azure Synapse, Redshift and BigQuery.

Databricks continues to be our solution of choice but Snowflake does have a better user interface and is easier to work with the data pipelines and with the overall UI.

I would advise others to first define a strong data strategy and then choose which data platform suits your needs. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case is ETL.

Using Databricks enables us to use the Data Mesh methodology, where every team performs their own ETL.

The most valuable feature is the versatility of the ecosystem. You can write code in SQL, Python, or Java.

The load distribution capabilities are good, and you can perform data processing tasks very quickly.

You can save and share notebooks between different teams.

The interface is easy to use.

The cost of this solution is high, on the expensive side.

In the future, I would like to see Data Lake support. That is something that I'm looking forward to.

I worked with Databricks for approximately two years in my previous company.

This is a very scalable solution. We have twenty-five data engineers that use it, and we may grow our usage.

The technical support is okay. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

Neutral

We did not use another similar solution prior to Databricks.

The cloud-based deployment is simple.

If you use an on-premises deployment then there is more to do.

We deployed it with our in-house team.

There is no maintenance required.

We have seen a return on our investment with Databricks.

Price-wise, I would rate Databricks a three out of five.

When we looked into Databricks, we evaluated Azure Data Factory and some of the others on the market. We found that Databricks was one of the easiest ones to use.

My advice for anybody that is looking into Databricks is not to use the on-premises deployment. Instead, use the cloud-based setup.

In summary, this is a good product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use Databricks for batch data processing and stream data processing.

Databricks provides a consistent interface for data engineers to work with data in a consistent language on a single integrated platform for ingesting, processing, and serving data to the end user.

The flexibility of Databricks is the most valuable feature. It gives us the ability to write analytics code in multiple languages.

There is a single workspace for different data roles like data engineers, machine learning engineers, and the end user, who can connect to the same system. 

Databricks computes separate from storage, so you are not coupled with the underlying data sets, allowing for multiple processes and multiple programs to be written on the same code.

I would like to see improvement with the UI. It is functional and useful, but it's a bit clunky at times. It should be more user-friendly.

In future releases, Databricks would benefit from enhanced metrics and tighter integration with Azure's diagnostics.

I have been using Databricks for eight months.

Databricks is very stable.

The scalability of this solution is good. In our organization, users include analysts, data engineers, and data scientists.

I would give Databrick service and support a four and a half out of five overall.

Positive

Prior to using Databricks, we used Azure Stream Analytics. We made the switch because of the scalability and integrated platform.

The initial setup of Databricks is more complex. I would rate it a four out of five on the complexity of the setup. It took two days to deploy the solution.

We used a third party for some of the implementations of Databricks. The number of staff required to deploy and maintain this solution depends on the number of processes you have. Due to the cloud nature of the technology, it is easy to deploy and maintain. 

The licensing of Databricks is a tiered licensing regime, so it is flexible. I feel their pricing is a five out of five.

Databricks is a one-stop shop for everything data related, and it can scale with you.

I would rate this solution a 9.5 out of 10 overall.

Our use case is confidential, but I can say we use it for a deep learning model for machine learning. 

The solution is built from Spark and has integration with MLflow, which is important for our use case. 

Databricks is also user-friendly, providing customizable codes and models that allow people to experiment quickly. 

Integration of Delta Lake is another useful feature.

Writing pandas-profiling reports could be easier. 

The ability to customize our own pipelines would enhance the product, similar to what's possible using ML files in Microsoft Azure DevOps. 

I have been using this product for one and a half years. 

For now the solution seems stable. 

The solution is easy to scale horizontally and it has a useful auto-scaling feature. For vertical scaling, you need to bring the system down and make some adjustments.

On my current project I have a team of 30 members under me, including data engineers and data science people. Our data science, engineering, and MLOps projects are expanding, so we are planning to do some vertical scaling to increase the team size to over 100 members. In our company, we are trying to certify more and more people in Databricks because it's cloud-agnostic. 

We have never needed to contact customer support, online resources have been sufficient to solve our problems. 

The initial setup of the solution is straightforward, once you understand the UI it is easy to implement. I would rate Databricks a four out of five for ease of setup.

One migration project took two to three months, including writing all the code and implementing end-to-end pipelines. 

We are planning to deploy the solution in stages over the next 15 months to completely implement MLOps for our organization.

I'm not involved in the financing, but I can say that the solution seemed reasonably priced compared to the competitors. Similar products are usually in the same price range. With five being affordable and one being expensive, I would rate Databricks a four out of five. 

I find that deployed systems work out cheaper than having to operate manually, which appeals to our customers. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

There is an issue where clusters are automatically deleted after termination or after 100 days of non-usage. This could be more user-friendly, and they could include an enabler to pin the clusters you want to keep, instead of having to go and research why clusters got deleted after implementing the product. That documentation needs to be right in front of the user to avoid issues.

I definitely recommend this product to other users. 

I use Databricks to manage the setting up of data lakes for SaaS.

The biggest problem associated with the product is that it is quite pricey. We cannot find a better solution than Databricks in the market currently.

I have been using Databricks for a year.

It is an expensive tool. The licensing model is a pay-as-you-go one.

The tool helps with data processing and analytics with large-scale data or big data since it is associated with managing data at a large scale.

For my general use cases, I would say that I am not a technical person, so I cannot explain to you how the tool helps with the area of data engineering tasks.

There is another team in my company that is involved in the use of machine learning and AI features in Databricks. My team is mostly into operations. The tool is used in a multi-country project.

For example, in my company, they make some shopping decisions related to solutions based on what is the product chosen by the whole company.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Our team is currently utilizing machine learning for various applications, and a few members are also exploring Databrick's use for ML operations.

In the manufacturing industry, Databricks can be beneficial to use because of machine learning. It is useful for tasks, such as product analysis or predictive maintenance.

I have been using Databricks for approximately six months

The stability of the clusters or the instances of Databricks would be better if it was a much more stable environment. We've had issues with crashes.

The scalability of Databricks is good as long as you have a data lake, and it's easy to scale.

We have approximately 50 users using this solution in my company.

We have a different team who handles the support. I do not have contact with Databricks support.

I have not used a similar solution to Databricks.

I have seen an ROI using Databricks.

I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten.

Having a good understanding of physical security in relation to cybersecurity in an OT (Operational Technology) environment would be beneficial, and utilizing an existing data lake prior to implementing a Databricks initiative would greatly aid in its success.

I rate Databricks an eight out of ten.

I like the simplicity and ease of use. 

You can deploy the solution to many clouds easily. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution offers a free community version.

The auto models can be improved. 

We can create auto models like Microsoft Azure Machine Learning. In Azure Machine Learning, they have these features, for example, for auto models or code, or by code. They need this in Databricks. 

We need more connectors between on-premises and the cloud. 

We'd like a more visual dashboard for analysis It needs better UI. 

I've used the solution for one and a half months. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

Scalability is no problem. At the beginning, we created a cluster, for example, and if we need more performance in the future, for example, or to accelerate the training, we can change the cluster. It's quite straightforward. 

We have five people using the solution. 

In one or two years, we'd like to promote the solution to clients and increase usage. Right now, the way it is used is limited. I know that some banks and aeronautics companies use it.

In terms of technical support, for now, we use the community. 

We are also aware of KNIME, Azure Machine Learning, and Anaconda. In Anaconda, we use many frameworks, for example.

We started with other platforms, like Azure Machine Learning due to the fact that, with AutoML, it's easy to use. However, now that we have more skills, we need other tools or platforms like Databricks. It's a good platform to deploy and develop machine learning in employees.

The implementation is quite easy. It's not complex or difficult. The first time, I did it using a tutorial which was quite helpful. Later, I took a course. I know it quite well. 

The deployment only takes a few days. 

You only need to deploy or maintain the solution. 

We did not need any outside assistance in terms of setting up the solution. 

For us, this product is free. We use the community version.

I am interested in using the enterprise version, however. Whether we use it or not depends on the projects and customers we get.

I work with a solution provider. We are a Databrick customer.

We are not partners of Databricks. Only we are partnered with Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS.

We are using the latest version of the solution. However, I do not know the exact version number. 

I still need time with the solution before providing advice to others. I need to prepare the capacity internally. So far, it's been great.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.