Toussaint Webb

Data + AI Summit 2026 Azure Databricks Announcements At Data + AI Summit 2026, we're announcing a wave of new capabilities that bring the combination of context and control to the agentic era.

Modern workflows depend on fast, reliable connectivity to data. Whether you’re refreshing dashboards, analyzing data in spreadsheets, or powering applications, the connection layer directly impacts performance and user experience. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve connectivity to Databricks, we’re excited to share enhancements to the Databricks open-source JDBC driver.

Spreadsheets remain the backbone of day-to-day business analysis. Finance teams model forecasts in Excel. Operations teams track performance. Leaders rely on spreadsheets to answer questions quickly. Yet, the most trusted and complete business data increasingly lives in a lakehouse. For many organizations, connecting that data to Excel today is complex, fragile, and inaccessible to business users.