Data & AI on Databricks · Modern Data Engineering

A demo runs on a spreadsheet. A product runs on a Lakehouse.

We design and build scalable Lakehouse architectures on Databricks — ETL/ELT pipelines, legacy migrations off Oracle, DB2, Cosmos and SQL Server, and real-time pipelines that feed your BI, your data science and your AI agents from one governed source. In-house data and cloud architects who solve the platform and the cloud together. Building since 2013.

Databricks Partner · Delta Lake · Unity Catalog-governed · ISO/IEC 27001:2022
One LakehouseSources → batch + stream
Bronzeraw · full history
Silvercleaned · conformed
Goldbusiness-ready
Delta Lake — ACID · time travel · Unity Catalog — governed across all layers
BIData ScienceAgents
Why it matters

Most AI projects don't fail on the model. They fail on the data.

Teams spend months on the clever part and lose on the boring part underneath it. Every one of these is a data-layer failure, and every one of them is avoidable.

01A one-off extract is a demo

A spreadsheet dump gets you a prototype. No refresh, no lineage, no scale — and the day the data changes, the whole thing quietly stops being true.

02Ungoverned data can't be trusted

No provenance, no access control, no idea what's actually in it. You can't prove what your model learned from, and in a regulated industry that's the whole ballgame.

03Brittle pipelines break in silence

Hand-rolled ETL that fails at 2am with no retry, no idempotency, no alert. The dashboard goes stale, the model goes stale, and a customer notices before you do.

04Data and AI live in different places

The data governed in a warehouse, the AI running somewhere else on a copy nobody's tracking. That gap is where trust, governance and every hard audit question fall through.

What we do

Four things, one platform.

Lakehouse architecture

Scalable Lakehouse on Databricks — Delta Lake, medallion architecture, structured and unstructured data in one governed place. The warehouse's reliability with the lake's flexibility, without running both.

ETL / ELT pipelines

Batch and incremental pipelines built declaratively on Lakeflow and Spark — clean, conformed, tested data with quality checks and lineage baked in, not bolted on after.

Legacy migrations

Off Oracle, DB2, Cosmos, SQL Server and on-prem warehouses onto the Lakehouse — incremental and validated, so you cut over with evidence instead of crossed fingers.

Real-time pipelines

Streaming ingestion and change data capture, so the data driving your dashboards and your agents is fresh enough to act on — not yesterday's snapshot.

How we build it

Raw data comes in messy. It leaves trustworthy.

We build on the medallion pattern — three layers, each one a step up in quality. Data lands raw, gets cleaned and conformed, then curated into business-ready tables. Every layer is Delta Lake underneath: ACID transactions, schema enforcement, time travel. Nothing is overwritten; everything is auditable back to source.

Sources
DatabasesFilesEventsAPIs
Auto Loader — new files picked up incrementally on a schedule.
Consumers
BIData ScienceAgents
Delta Lake — ACID transactions · schema enforcement · time travel · full lineage
Unity Catalog — one set of access controls, lineage and audit across all three layers

Quality rises left to right. Governance and history run underneath the whole thing. Governance shown here for context — it's the Governed Data Platform page's subject in full.

Click Bronze, Silver or Gold to follow one record through the three layers.

Why it's one budget, not two

The same governed data feeds your dashboards, your data science and your agents.

This is the argument that changes the conversation. Most companies build a data platform for BI, then start an entirely separate AI project on a separate copy of the data. That's two budgets, two governance stories and one gap between them. Build the Gold layer once, govern it once, and BI, data science and your AI agents all read from the same trusted source.

One governed Gold layer
built once · governed once
Business Intelligence
Dashboards & reporting on Databricks SQL, Power BI, Tableau.
Data Science & ML
Notebooks, features and models on the same tables — no copy.
AI Agents
Production agents on AgentBricks, reading governed data — not a scraped copy.
One governance model — Unity Catalog access, lineage and audit over all three.
Same data. Same governance. Three destinations — and no gap between them.
The on-ramp

Off the old estate, without the big-bang risk.

Most enterprises don't start clean — they start on Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Cosmos or an on-prem warehouse that's expensive, slow and in the way. We move you off it incrementally: land the raw data first, rebuild the logic in Lakeflow, run old and new side by side, and cut over only once the numbers reconcile. No rip-and-replace, no six-month blackout, no leap of faith.

From — the legacy estate
migrate
To — the Lakehouse on Databricks
Gold — business-ready tables & BI
Silver — cleaned & conformed
Bronze — your data, landed as-is first
nothing is transformed until it's safely in
Land raw first — so a migration is auditable, not a leap of faith.
01Assess02Land raw03Rebuild logic in Lakeflow04Run in parallel & reconcile05Cut over

Select a source system to see what moves cleanly, what gets re-engineered, and the ingestion path.

The stack

The Databricks data engineering stack, end to end.

Databricks at the core, with the ingestion, orchestration and BI tools around it — and the alternatives we'll use when they fit what you already run. A sample across the layers:

Databricks-native tools lead each row; alternatives (Kafka, Fivetran, dbt, Airflow, Power BI, Tableau) are shown because we compose to what you already run. A representative stack — we trim to what your team standardises on.

In production

Governed ETL, feeding live BI — in production today.

In production

A large automotive supplier

We built governed ETL pipelines feeding live business intelligence for a large automotive supplier — data fresh enough for the business to act on, governed end to end. On the insurance side of the same relationship, we added intelligent document processing over ACORD forms, policy Q&A and inspection reports. One team, the platform and the pipelines, in production — not a pilot.

Why Focaloid for data engineering

Cloud and data, solved by one team.

Cloud + data in one team

In-house data architects and cloud architects who solve the platform and the cloud together — natively on AWS, also Azure and GCP. No hand-off, no two vendors pointing at each other.

Databricks, and ready on AgentBricks

A Databricks Partner with a dedicated team. The same Lakehouse we build feeds the AI agents we run on AgentBricks — so the data foundation and the AI on top come from one place.

Migrations without the big bang

Since 2013, moving legacy estates off Oracle, DB2, SQL Server and on-prem — incremental, parallel-run, validated. You cut over on evidence, not optimism.

Governed from the first table

Built for Unity Catalog governance and an ISO 27001:2022 practice, so the data your BI and your AI depend on is data you can actually prove.

Partners & Certifications
Databricks PartnerClaude Partner NetworkISO/IEC 27001:2022 Certified
Who it's for

Built for teams whose data is in the way of what's next.

Our data's scattered across systems and our AI project is stalled on it.

We're on Oracle and SQL Server, we know we need to modernise, and a big-bang migration terrifies us.

Our dashboards are always a day behind the business.

We want to build AI agents but our data isn't ready for them.

We have a data lake and a warehouse and they don't agree with each other.

We need our BI, our data science and our AI to run off the same trusted numbers.

Usually a CTO, VP of Engineering, Head of Data or Data Engineering, a Chief Data Officer, or a data-platform lead — in the US, Europe and APAC.

Where this leads

The foundation is step one. Here's what it's for.

Common questions

Before you book.

Why Databricks specifically?

Because a Lakehouse gives you the reliability and governance of a warehouse and the flexibility and scale of a lake in one platform — instead of running both and reconciling them. And it's the one place where your data, your BI and your AI agents can live under a single governance model, which is the whole point of this cluster.

Do we have to move everything at once?

No. We land your raw data first, rebuild the logic incrementally, and run old and new in parallel until the numbers reconcile. You cut over piece by piece, on evidence — never a big-bang blackout.

Can you work with our existing warehouse, or does it have to go?

Both are options. We migrate off legacy platforms where that's the goal, but we can also integrate — Delta Sharing and federation let the Lakehouse sit alongside what you have and take over gradually.

What about real-time?

Streaming ingestion, change data capture and Auto Loader keep the data fresh enough to drive live dashboards and agents. The same medallion architecture runs in batch or streaming — it's a speed setting, not a rebuild.

Is our data governed and secure?

Yes — Unity Catalog gives you access control, lineage and audit across every layer, and we work to an ISO 27001:2022 practice. The governance layer is deep enough that it's a page of its own: the Governed Data Platform.

Does this only make sense if we're doing AI?

No. The same Lakehouse powers your BI, your data science and your analytics — AI is one consumer of it, not a precondition. Plenty of clients build the data foundation first and add agents later, or never. It stands on its own.

Which cloud does this run on?

We build and migrate natively on AWS, and also on Azure and GCP. Our data and cloud architects work together, so the platform and the cloud underneath it are designed as one thing.

The next step

Build the foundation before you build the AI.

Start with a data assessment — we'll map your current estate, the migration path off it, and the Lakehouse architecture that feeds your BI, your data science and your agents from one governed source.

Databricks Partner · Delta Lake · Unity Catalog-governed · ISO/IEC 27001:2022
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