Databricks vs. Data Cloud—or both? Finding the right solution for you

Manvir Sandhu

Founder & Chief Innovation Officer

Financial institutions are drowning in data but starving for insights. Despite investing in data warehouses and vendor solutions, only 6% of banks and 4% of credit unions rate their data strategies as highly effective, according to Cornerstone Advisors. Siloed systems, inconsistent reporting, and inefficiencies make it hard to turn data into action.

That’s where leading solutions from Databricks and Salesforce Data Cloud come in. These powerful tools can transform how financial institutions manage, unify, and activate their data. But when should you use one, the other, or both?

Let’s break it down.

The data dilemma in financial services

Banks, credit unions, and wealth management firms generate mountains of data from core systems handling deposits, transactions, lending, and payments. But in 2025, when AI and data-driven decisions define industry leaders, many institutions are still struggling to turn raw data into real insights.

Traditional data warehouses struggle to scale efficiently, often requiring extensive manual reconciliation and engineering—leading to” death by reporting,” especially given stringent regulatory audits and reporting requirements. Data is often trapped in core systems and not available real time, making it difficult to support advanced analytics like AI-driven segmentation and next-best-action modeling. The result? Disconnected, untimely, inaccessible data, conflicting reports, and missed opportunities.

Databricks: The power of the industry leading Lake House

Databricks offers a modern data lakehouse architecture, specifically designed to address financial institutions' data challenges from a single platform. Unlike legacy warehouses, Databricks provides:

A single, scalable platform for housing structured and unstructured data
Secure, regulatory-compliant data storage
Data transformation capabilities to turn raw banking data into actionable insights
Near real-time processing for up-to-date reporting and analytics
Advanced AI/ML capabilities to drive predictive insights

By leveraging Databricks, financial institutions can streamline operations, reduce manual data reconciliation, and enable data democratization. With clean, real-time, and AI-ready data, banks and credit unions can finally move beyond reporting headaches and start making data-driven decisions with confidence.

Salesforce Data Cloud: Turning data into action

Databricks establishes a strong data foundation, enabling data democratization, intelligence, and agile data product delivery. Salesforce is best in class when it comes to customer and member engagement. By deploying and connecting Salesforce Data Cloud to Databricks, customer/member engagement and marketing teams can seamlessly take timely, relevant, and meaningful actions from within the Salesforce ecosystem and user experience.

Salesforce Data Cloud provides:

Real-time customer segmentation using behavioral and transactional data
Smart audience creation for personalized marketing and engagement
Seamless integration with Salesforce CRM and Marketing Cloud to enable AI-driven and customer interactions
Data unification tools to resolve issues like multiple customer records across different systems
Agentic AI: Data Cloud can combine the power of Enterprise level core data, Salesforce metadata, and other unstructured data to develop, train, and deploy effective agents via Salesforce Agentforce
Performance tracking and closed-loop insights to refine campaigns and customer strategies
A self-service environment that allows marketing teams to build and utilize audience segments with limited dependence on IT/Data infrastructure teams

Unlike traditional reporting solutions, Data Cloud is specifically designed for marketing and CX teams, delivering speed, intelligence, and agility. By giving business users direct access to data without IT dependency, Data Cloud makes organizations more responsive, efficient, and data-driven.

When to choose Databricks vs. Data Cloud, or both

For financial institutions evaluating their data strategies, the choice between Databricks vs. Data Cloud depends on their business needs:

Poor operational reporting, data inconsistencies, siloed BI - Databricks
Establishing data governance and lineage to support regulatory audits and compliance - Databricks
Enabling data science, machine learning, and advanced data analytics - Databricks
Building a data platform for real-time segmentation, audience creation, and engagement—integrated with Salesforce Marketing Cloud and CRM - Data Cloud
Developing a data platform with agentic AI capabilities embedded in the Salesforce employee and customer/member experience - Data Cloud
Driving enterprise-wide data modernization and AI adoption - Databricks + Data Cloud

For institutions already leveraging Salesforce as their core CRM, integrating Databricks and Data Cloud ensures they can unify customer data, deliver AI-powered personalization, and drive efficiency across all business units.

The case for Databricks and Data Cloud

Financial institutions need a data strategy that works across teams, not in silos.

Finance and operations get real-time, accurate reporting and analytics with Databricks. No more outdated reports or fragmented data.
Marketing and CX use Data Cloud to segment customers in real time and engage with AI-driven insights, making interactions more relevant and timely.

Bringing both together creates a connected, enterprise-wide data strategy—better decisions, smarter engagement, and a foundation for AI-driven innovation.

Zero copy: Flexible data integration

A major advantage of combining Databricks and Data Cloud is Zero Copy functionality. This allows financial institutions to access data stored in Databricks without duplicating it in Data Cloud, reducing storage costs while maintaining real-time access to critical insights.

That said, Zero Copy isn’t required. Some institutions may still choose to store select data within Data Cloud to enhance performance for marketing and AI-driven engagement. The flexibility to tailor data storage strategies ensures institutions can balance cost, efficiency, and performance.

Agentforce & AI-powered automation

For institutions leveraging or looking to implement Agentforce, Data Cloud serves as a key platform for AI-driven automation and workflow optimization.

Data Cloud enables real-time engagement, ensuring AI-powered interactions are immediate and relevant.
Databricks provides structured, accurate data, ensuring AI models operate with high-quality, timely insights.

In a time when AI is reshaping financial services, institutions that prioritize a strong data foundation will be the ones to thrive. By combining Databricks and Data Cloud, organizations can move beyond fragmented data systems and build an infrastructure that drives efficiency, innovation, and smarter decision-making.

"AI is not just a tool; it is a collaborator that enhances development, optimizes performance, and accelerates innovation."
- Mark Wensell, CEO, Terazo a Zennify Company

Databricks & Data Cloud: Turn data into action, and AI into your advantage

At Zennify, we are experts in both Databricks and Salesforce Data Cloud, helping financial institutions modernize their data strategies to break down silos, unlock real-time insights, and activate AI-powered engagement strategies.

With our recent acquisition of Terazo, we’ve strengthened our data engineering and AI expertise, bringing industry-leading Agile data transformation, automation, and observability to our clients. Whether it's CI/CD-driven Databricks deployments, AI-powered automation, or enterprise-grade data governance, our team ensures financial institutions have the right foundation to scale.

Want to assess whether Databricks vs. Data Cloud, or both is the best fit for your business? Let’s chat