Rakuten’s Journey from Data Silos to Unified Intelligence

Rakuten Group's 70+ businesses span e-commerce, fintech, mobile, and more across 30+ countries and regions, serving 2.1B+ global members and ¥48.7T (approx. $300B) global gross transaction value in 2025—one of the world's largest interconnected digital ecosystems. As the Group accelerates AI-driven products, copy-heavy integration of data in multiple silos across cloud and on-premise environments makes gaining real-time insights challenging.

Rakuten built Databridge on Databricks to connect those silos into a single, searchable, secure hub—without moving underlying data by default. By combining Unity Catalog, Lakehouse Federation, and DAMS (Data Access Management Service) on Databricks Apps, the Group is shifting from physical copying to governed, zero-copy federated access at enterprise scale.

This session shares the vision and architecture behind Databridge: how Rakuten unified discovery, access, and compliance across multi-cloud and hybrid environments, the design adjustments that made federation workable, and lessons from operating governance, performance, and audit in production.