Cloudera, the only company enabling AI on data anywhere, has unveiled key updates to its platform, including the Cloudera Iceberg REST Catalog and Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer. These advancements reinforce Cloudera’s leadership in providing the most comprehensive open data lakehouse powered by Apache Iceberg. The Iceberg REST Catalog now offers enhanced interoperability for seamless data sharing, while Lakehouse Optimizer ensures data remains optimized, cost-effective, and ready for consumption by any engine all under Cloudera’s unified governance and security framework. The updates were introduced at EVOLVE25 NYC, Cloudera’s premier AI and data industry event.
As enterprises accelerate AI and analytics initiatives, they often encounter challenges such as complex data architectures, siloed platforms, and inconsistent governance policies. Transferring data between systems for analytics or AI training increases operational costs, introduces security risks, and slows decision-making. Modern organizations require open, secure, and interoperable data environments that support AI-driven insights across multiple engines without data duplication or vendor lock-in.
Cloudera Iceberg REST Catalog: Faster Time to Value and Lower TCO
Cloudera is the first provider to integrate the Iceberg REST Catalog across a full-lifecycle data and AI platform, enabling secure, zero-copy data sharing with unified governance across any cloud. By integrating the Iceberg REST Catalog into its platform, Cloudera allows third-party engines to directly access managed data without moving it, ensuring consistent policy enforcement and metadata intelligence across public clouds, data centers, and the edge. Cloudera remains the only vendor capable of delivering unified security, governance, and interoperability throughout the entire data lifecycle from real-time ingestion and large-scale processing to AI and BI consumption.
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With REST-based access, Cloudera extends the power of Apache Iceberg, helping enterprises future-proof their data strategies while maintaining control, visibility, and compliance. Customers using Iceberg can now experience seamless zero-copy interoperability across leading analytics and AI engines, including Snowflake, Databricks, AWS Athena, AWS EMR, and Salesforce with full ACID compliance and unified access policies. They gain enterprise-grade governance, fine-grained access controls, lineage, and auditing through Cloudera’s Shared Data Experience (SDX), enabling secure data democratization and regulatory compliance. Open metadata access allows instant discovery of data assets, accelerating AI development and BI with a consistent source of truth. These enhancements also drive lower total cost of ownership and faster time to value, with some customers reporting up to a 79% reduction in data storage costs while strengthening AI pipelines.
Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer: Enhanced Performance and Cost Efficiency
The Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer introduces automated optimizations and table maintenance for Apache Iceberg within Cloudera’s lakehouse. Unlike traditional solutions, it provides intelligent optimizations, such as rewriting manifest and position delete files, eliminating the need for manual data management and reducing operational costs. The service supports any Iceberg-compatible engine on any public cloud, with enterprise-ready observability and control through a user interface for granular policy definition. Policies can be applied to individual tables or entire catalogs, with a future on-premises release planned. Internal benchmarks indicate query performance improvements up to 13x and storage cost reductions of 36%.
“Cloudera pioneered the Big Data industry, and remains a leading platform provider who continues to invest in making the Apache Iceberg open table format enterprise ready,” said Leo Brunnick, Chief Product Officer, Cloudera. “With today’s news, we continue to deliver on the promise of flexibility, scalability, and uncompromised insights when and where you need them the most. That commitment is why the world’s largest organizations rely on Cloudera to bring AI to their data wherever it lives.”