Qumulo has integrated its NeuralSearch capability with Databricks OpenSharing so that Databricks users and agents get access to Qumulo's stores when searching the Databrick's repository.
Databricks launched OpenSharing in June, saying it was an open, vendor-neutral protocol for sharing AI assets, including Agent Skills, AI models, and unstructured data, across organisations and platforms. It builds on Databricks’ Delta Sharing, by adding support for Iceberg IRC (Iceberg REST Catalog) clients, expanding data providers’ reach to more recipients. Customers can access on-premises or private-cloud assets via OpenSharing, including through storage partners such as Everpure, MinIO, Qumulo and VAST Data.
Qumulo has now launched its contribution to OpenSharing. NeuralSearch is its storage-native search platform, turning unstructured data into searchable intelligence using SQL, natural language, and semantic search with no crawlers or third-party indexing required. NeuralSearch is built into Qumulo's Data Platform, including Cloud Data Fabric. With OpenSharing and Qumulo, customers get a single, geo-distributed view of enterprise data via Unity Catalog that spans locations, regions, and cloud providers. They can can discover, query, and collaborate on tabular data.
Brandon Whitelaw, SVP and Head of Product at Qumulo, said: “Organizations can no longer afford the cost, complexity, and delays of copying massive datasets across environments just to support AI and analytics. By combining Qumulo NeuralSearch with OpenSharing, we're enabling customers to securely discover, query, and collaborate on data across data centers, edge locations, and public clouds, in real time, without moving the data itself. Together, we're helping organizations accelerate AI initiatives, simplify governance, and unlock faster insights from distributed data, all while maintaining a single source of truth."
The two companies say that, by securely connecting Databricks compute directly to Qumulo’s edge-to-core storage framework, data teams can drastically reduce the latency traditionally associated with geo-distributed workloads, due to constant data replication. Qumulo says the Databricks partnership allows it to support a massive market by offering an open architecture that avoids vendor lock-in for customers in verticals such as financial services, life sciences, and manufacturing. The collaboration enables seamless data flows between storage and AI analytics tools across all major cloud providers.
The key strategic advantages for joint customers include:
Open access to data across the enterprise: Qumulo claims technical advantages over rivals, such as its robust multi-format support for open table formats like Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake, alongside underlying file formats like Parquet. It serves as a unified file and object platform, saying it’s “the first to seamlessly project data across multi-region and multi-cloud environments.”
Unified Governance for AI: Qumulo brings globally distributed data under Databricks Unity Catalog, ensuring centralized governance, security, and compliance across the entire data lifecycle.
Workflow Acceleration: By allowing data to flow smoothly from Qumulo through Databricks, the partnership accelerates the “time-to-data-product” and reduces data cleansing overhead.
Stephen Orban, SVP, Product Ecosystem and Partnerships at Databricks, said: "Customers consistently tell us they want the freedom to leverage their enterprise data across a broad ecosystem without being constrained by proprietary architectures. Our partnership with Qumulo reflects the commitment from Databricks to open platforms by enabling a non-proprietary, single source of truth for enterprise data, giving customers the architectural flexibility to seamlessly use their data across tools and environments.”
The two companies say that, as enterprises scale agentic AI, AI applications, and advanced analytics, open access to governed data across distributed environments is becoming increasingly critical. That’s why Databricks instituted its OpenSharing facility and Qumulo is one of Databricks’ storage partner joining in.
MinIO is already there, a blog saying its “AIStor Table Sharing builds the open OpenSharing protocol directly into the data platform.” Orban said: “By natively integrating OpenSharing, MinIO enables enterprises to securely connect on-premises data to the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform without complex replication, accelerating time-to-insight for hybrid workloads."
We understand that Everpure’s OpenSharing integration is in private preview as is VAST Data’s integration. Databricks has also secured commitments from Cohesity, Commvault, HPE, NetApp, Nutanix, Rubrik, and others to build native integrations by the end of 2026
Bootnote
Databricks Delta Sharing is a zero-copy way of sharing third-party data with customers using its own data. Unity Catalog is Databricks’ central metadata management facility.