Databricks Data Intelligence Platform vs. IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimization Studio

Medium to Large data throughput shops will benefit the most from Databricks Spark processing. Smaller use cases may find the barrier to entry a bit too high for casual use cases. Some of the overhead to kicking off a Spark compute job can actually lead to your workloads taking longer, but past a certain point the performance returns cannot be beat.

Incentivized

It is well suited for solving large-sized, mixed-integer, and integer programming problems. Now, the new version supports for Multi-Objective optimization along with some new algorithms such as Benders Decomposition. It is less appropriate for quadratic programming problems where the objective function is the product of multiple variables. However, it's very easy to code any problem.

• Process raw data in One Lake (S3) env to relational tables and views
• Share notebooks with our business analysts so that they can use the queries and generate value out of the data
• Try out PySpark and Spark SQL queries on raw data before using them in our Spark jobs
• Modern day ETL operations made easy using Databricks. Provide access mechanism for different set of customers

Incentivized

• Linear Programming
• Mixed-Integer Linear Programming
• Non-Linear Convex-Optimization
• Visualization
• Shadow Price Analysis
• Parameter Tuning

• Connect my local code in Visual code to my Databricks Lakehouse Platform cluster so I can run the code on the cluster. The old databricks-connect approach has many bugs and is hard to set up. The new Databricks Lakehouse Platform extension on Visual Code, doesn't allow the developers to debug their code line by line (only we can run the code).
• Maybe have a specific Databricks Lakehouse Platform IDE that can be used by Databricks Lakehouse Platform users to develop locally.
• Visualization in MLFLOW experiment can be enhanced

Incentivized

• Data handling from different sources like Note Pad, etc.
• Large size of MILP problems.
• Various parameters to set.

Because it is an amazing platform for designing experiments and delivering a deep dive analysis that requires execution of highly complex queries, as well as it allows to share the information and insights across the company with their shared workspaces, while keeping it secured.

in terms of graph generation and interaction it could improve their UI and UX

Incentivized

It's nice to use and with good optimization.

One of the best customer and technology support that I have ever experienced in my career. You pay for what you get and you get the Rolls Royce. It reminds me of the customer support of SAS in the 2000s when the tools were reaching some limits and their engineer wanted to know more about what we were doing, long before "data science" was even a name. Databricks truly embraces the partnership with their customer and help them on any given challenge.

Honestly, to say, I never contacted CPLEX but used its forum to know/clarify any issues I faced.

The most important differentiating factor for Databricks Lakehouse Platform from these other platforms is support for ACID transactions and the time travel feature. Also, native integration with managed MLflow is a plus. EMR, Cloudera, and Hortonworks are not as optimized when it comes to Spark Job Execution. Other platforms need to be self-managed, which is another huge hassle.

Incentivized

IBM CPLEX Optimization Studio covers wide range of problems in comparison to Gurobi and also offers a number of visualization tools for results analysis. It has better customization and parameter tuning options in comparison to Gurobi. It offers various API integrations such as Python, Java and C++ which is not the case with Gurobi.

• The ability to spin up a BIG Data platform with little infrastructure overhead allows us to focus on business value not admin
• DB has the ability to terminate/time out instances which helps manage cost.
• The ability to quickly access typical hard to build data scenarios easily is a strength.

Incentivized

• Faster computation leading to better internal customer relations
• Able to solve high variable problems with ease
• Anomaly detection became easier within business