Guide: Harnessing the power of a private data marketplace on Databricks with Harbr

At Harbr, we empower organizations to transform their data into valuable data products and deliver them at enterprise scale. This guide walks you through how to use Harbr’s private data marketplace on Databricks to simplify data sharing and monetization — whether you’re selling data, democratizing insights to internal users, or just controlling access to your critical assets. By combining Harbr with Databricks, you can enhance governance, accelerate innovation, and reduce time-to-value across your entire data ecosystem regardless of whether they are a Databricks user.

What this guide covers

• Understanding the Databricks platform
• Exploring Delta Sharing with the private marketplace on Databricks
• Steps to get started with Harbr + Databricks
• Key benefits and differentiators when using Harbr + Databricks

Why choose a private data marketplace on Databricks?

A private data marketplace on Databricks offers a powerful, secure, and scalable framework for sharing data products both internally and externally. By layering Harbr’s no-code self-service and intuitive organization-based access controls on top of Databricks, organizations can:

• Streamline data discovery and sharing for technical and non-technical users.
• Extend collaboration to partners who do not use Databricks.
• Maintain robust security without sacrificing openness or innovation.
• Monetize data products with ease.

This combination ensures faster data adoption, broader reach, and maximizes return on data investments.

What is Databricks?

Databricks is a data intelligence platform that bridges the gap between data engineering, data science, and machine learning. Renowned for its scalable “lakehouse” architecture, it supports data integration, storage, processing, governance, and AI workflows.

Harbr builds on this foundation adding a private, enterprise-scale, data marketplace capability. This creates a seamless experience to discover, customize, and manage data products — all while leveraging Databricks’ compute, storage, and governance controls. Additionally, Harbr extends Databricks’ open and federated ethos by connecting organizations and user personas that may or may not be using Databricks.

What is Delta Sharing?

Delta Sharing is the open-source protocol behind Databricks’ data sharing capabilities, allowing providers to securely share data without replication. Harbr makes it easier to take advantage of this by managing the entire lifecycle of these shares. Harbr enriches the user journey with no-code access controls, entitlements, and governance. Crucially, Harbr facilitates collaboration with both Databricks and non-Databricks users through secure endpoints and tailored data products.

Key benefits of a private data marketplace on Databricks

When you combine Harbr’s private data marketplace with Databricks’ robust analytics environment, you unlock a powerful set of advantages:

1. Open & federated collaboration

• Easily bridge data silos across different organizations, technology stacks, or cloud preferences, reflecting Databricks’ open-standards approach.
• Facilitate secure collaboration and exchange of data products with suppliers, customers, or partners outside of your Databricks environment.

2. No-code, self-service data products

• Transform complex data assets into curated, ready-to-use products accessible by anyone — even if they’re not on Databricks.
• Lower the barrier to entry for non-technical stakeholders and external partners, empowering them to discover, customize, and consume data independently.

3. Seamless integration with Databricks

• Leverage existing compute, storage, and governance in Databricks for consistent, scalable performance.
• Maintain a single source of truth while extending Databricks’ security and compliance frameworks across various technologies and user segments.

4. Enterprise-grade governance at scale

• Control discovery, access, and usage across complex operating models, external partners, and diverse technology stacks.
• Configure granular entitlements so only authorized users can view, subscribe to, or customize specific data products.

The Harbr Marketplace — built on Databricks

The Harbr Marketplace facilitates discovery and evaluation of datasets, ML models, and analytics tools. Harbr extends the Databricks core capabilities, delivering:

• Advanced asset management for packaging multiple data sources or models into user-friendly products
• Granular, multi-level access controls that extend Databricks security to complex governance scenarios
• Streamlined product listings and guided onboarding for both internal teams and external organizations—even those not using Databricks

This synergy maximizes ROI on your Databricks investment while simplifying data discovery, consumption, and monetization at scale—across organizational and technological boundaries.

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Getting started with your data marketplace

1. Understand the basics

• Set up a Databricks workspace with the necessary configurations.
• Integrate Harbr to layer a private marketplace on top of Databricks’ compute and governance.
• Connect any data assets — no matter where they are stored — to your data marketplace.

2. Configure your data products

• A data product is one or more data assets that deliver a value proposition to a defined target market and is optimally placed, packaged, and permissioned.
• From your Harbr platform, you can package datasets, notebooks, code, ML models, or analytics dashboards into self-service products for other uses to discover and use.
• Configure entitlements with Harbr’s granular access controls, ensuring compliance with organization-wide governance policies.

3. Optimize your listings

• Use Harbr’s tools to create informative product pages, including metadata, usage examples, and sample queries.
• Categorize products by industry, domain, or use case for targeted discovery across diverse user personas.

4. Manage security and access

• Automate approvals and workflows to reduce manual overhead while maintaining robust governance — even across external organizations.
• Use Delta Sharing to connect these products to your consumers’ environments, including those not on Databricks, securely.

5. Use and query data products for maximum value

• With Harbr’s integrations with popular tools like Tableau, Superset, Trino, and many more, users can immediately start to get value from data.
• Easily query, slice, and filter datasets with Harbr’s no-code and AI-powered query capabilities.

6. Scale with confidence

• Analyze usage data and feedback with Harbr’s reporting tools to continuously refine and improve.
• Iterate on offerings based on market demand, stakeholder needs, and evolving AI initiatives.

How Harbr enhances Databricks for data providers

Harbr amplifies Databricks’ power by simplifying the complexities of data sharing and governance. Key enhancements include:

• No-code tools: Non-technical users can discover, customize, and share data products within a few clicks—inside or outside Databricks.
• Unified governance: Harbr’s granular entitlements build on Databricks’ native security, giving platform owners fine-grained control over data discovery, subscription, and usage across any organization.
• Advanced analytics: Monitor product performance, user adoption, and subscription activity to understand engagement patterns and optimize offerings.
• Flexible operating models: Support both internal data democratization and external monetization from a single platform—without losing oversight or control.
• Cross-platform collaboration: Extend Databricks’ open approach by bridging silos to accommodate different clouds, technology stacks, and user bases — promoting true federation and avoiding costly data migration and vendor lock-in.

Conclusion

Harbr and Databricks work together to deliver a unified approach to seamlessly manage, discover, and use data products by combining:

• Open & federated collaboration
• No-code, self-service data products
• Seamless integration with Databricks
• Enterprise-grade governance at scale

You can maximize the value of your data assets, accelerate AI initiatives, and deliver faster time-to-insight across your organization and beyond.

Ready to get started or learn more? Contact our team or explore our resources to begin harnessing the full power of Harbr and Databricks — no matter what technology you, your partners, or your customers use.

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