Data analysis and AI software start-up Databricks announced Oct. 6 its acquisition of German no-code company 8080 Labs. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
8080 Labs is the creator behind bamboolib, a UI-based data exploration and transformation tool. Bamboolib facilitates no-code workflows that synchronize with the Python ecosystem. Data scientists are able to quickly and easily explore their data and transform it without having to write or interpret code.
These UI-driven features will be integrated into Databricks’ Lakehouse Platform to expand its own low-code/no-code capabilities. This will lower the barrier of entry to understanding and gaining insights from data science, allowing a broader audience to access Lakehouse and promote the normalization of data and AI within a business.
Featured no-code use cases Databricks’ now offers through bamboolib include data preparation, data transformation, data visualization, and data exploration.
The acquisition of 8080 Labs comes off the heels of Databricks’ acquisition of Israeli open-source data visualization tool Redash in June 2020. Redash is a tool designed to gather data from multiple sources to develop charts, dashboards and visualizations of the data. It’s created to be accessible to anyone regardless of IT skill, making the June acquisition the first step in democratizing data for Databricks users.
Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO of Databricks said in a press release, “Together with last year’s acquisition of Redash, we are broadening the focus of our user base to a wider audience that prefers low-code/no-code solutions. Bringing simple capabilities to Databricks is a critical step in empowering more people within an organization to easily analyze and explore large sets of data, regardless of expertise.”
Read also: Quick Base Alternatives: 5 Of The Best No-Code App Builders
The rise in no code/low code development
Of course, Databricks is not the first of its kind to see the goldmine that lies in no-code development. Its own tech-giant investors such as Google and Amazon are making moves to offer tools that don’t require coding.
- Google acquired AppSheet in January 2020, allowing companies to build mobile apps without writing a single line of code.
- Amazon introduced Honeycode in June 2020, a no-code custom app builder.
- Microsoft (not a Databricks investor) offers Power Apps, a low-code development platform that is seeing incredible growth.
And while the enterprise is certainly targeted for these tools, it’s not big-business exclusive. TechRepublic conducted a low-code, no-code survey across a range of disciplines, company sizes, industry verticals, and job functions and found that 47 percent use low-code, no-code tools in their organization. Of the 35 percent who are not currently using a low-code tool, one in five (20 percent) said they intend to adopt the technology in the next 12 months.
Nobody is surprised by this — this technology enables organizations of any size to overcome developer shortages and make use of intelligent automation no matter the resources it may have available.
Databricks is not the first and won’t be the last to invest time and money into the development of no-code tools, but these strategic acquisitions are ensuring they’ll be a leader in providing access to data and AI insights no matter a user’s IT background.
If you’re looking for a no-code/low-code app development tool, use our Product Selection Tool for App Development. We’ll provide you with a list of software recommendations tailored to your needs.
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