Cloudera leads Iceberg innovation with REST Catalog, powering zero-copy data sharing and unified metadata intelligence

Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer delivers automated optimizations and table maintenance for Apache Iceberg tables within Cloudera’s open data lakehouse

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 25, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  Cloudera, the only company bringing AI to data anywhere, today announced updates to its platform, specifically Cloudera Iceberg REST Catalog and Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer, both strengthening the company’s commitment to delivering the best open data lakehouse powered by Iceberg. With these updates, Iceberg REST Catalog provides the open interoperability needed to share data seamlessly, while Lakehouse Optimizer will help to ensure data is always optimized and cost-effective for all engines accessing the data, all under Cloudera’s unified governance and security. These enhanced capabilities were unveiled at EVOLVE25 NYC—Cloudera's premiere AI and data industry event.

As enterprises race to unlock the power of AI and analytics, they face significant barriers: complex data architectures, siloed platforms, and inconsistent governance. Moving data between systems for analysis or AI training increases costs, introduces security risks, and delays insights. Modern organizations need open, secure, and interoperable data architectures that support data anywhere for AI everywhere and multi-engine analytics without forcing data duplication or vendor lock-in.

Cloudera Iceberg REST Catalog - Delivering a Lower TCO with Faster Time to Value

Cloudera is the first and only provider to integrate the Iceberg REST Catalog across a full-lifecycle data and AI platform, enabling secure, zero-copy data sharing and unified governance across any cloud or data center. Cloudera’s new offering solves these challenges by integrating the Iceberg REST Catalog into its platform. This allows third-party engines to access Cloudera-managed data directly—without copying or moving it—and ensures consistent policy enforcement and metadata intelligence in public clouds, data centers, and the edge. Cloudera is the only vendor, across all clouds and the data center, capable of delivering unified security, governance, and interoperability across the entire data lifecycle—from real-time ingestion and large-scale processing to AI and BI consumption. By extending the power of Apache Iceberg with REST-based access, Cloudera enables enterprises to future-proof their data strategies while retaining control, visibility, and compliance.

Following these updates, all Cloudera customers on Iceberg will now benefit from seamless zero-copy interoperability across the ecosystem, enabling connections to leading analytics and AI engines such as Snowflake, Databricks, AWS Athena, AWS EMR, and Salesforce—with full ACID compliance and unified access policies. They will also gain enterprise-grade governance, extending fine-grained access controls, lineage, and auditing to third-party tools through Cloudera’s Shared Data Experience (SDX), which ensures secure data democratization and compliance at scale. In addition, customers will have open metadata access, providing instant discoverability of data assets without being locked into proprietary catalogs, which accelerates AI development and business intelligence with a consistent source of truth. Finally, these enhancements deliver lower total cost of ownership and faster time to value: customers report up to a 79% reduction in data storage costs while improving visibility across lines of business. For example, a major global satellite customer realized these savings while simultaneously strengthening their AI data pipelines.

Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer - Increasing Query Performance and Reducing Storage Costs

The Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer is a new, intelligent service that will deliver automated optimizations and table maintenance for Apache Iceberg within Cloudera's lakehouse. It uniquely offers advanced, intelligent optimizations that go beyond basic table maintenance, including tasks like rewriting manifest and position delete files. By intelligently optimizing tables, it eliminates the need for manual data management tasks and operational costs, allowing customers to focus on extracting insights from their data. It's an open solution, applicable to any Iceberg-compatible engine on any public cloud, and provides enterprise-ready observability and control through a unique user interface that allows for granular policy definition and modification. Policies can be applied to a specific table or an entire catalog, and the service will be the only one of its kind available on-premises in an upcoming future release. Internal benchmarks show that this service improves query performance by up to 13x and reduces storage costs by 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.”

Both Cloudera Data Sharing powered by Iceberg REST Catalog and Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer are now available. To learn more, visit our website.

About Cloudera
Cloudera is the only data and AI platform company that large organizations trust to bring AI to their data anywhere it lives. Unlike other providers, Cloudera delivers a consistent cloud experience that converges public clouds, data centers, and the edge, leveraging a proven open-source foundation. As the pioneer in big data, Cloudera empowers businesses to apply AI and assert control over 100% of their data, in all forms, delivering unified security, governance, and real-time predictive insights. The world’s largest organizations across all industries rely on Cloudera to transform decision-making and ultimately boost bottom lines, safeguard against threats, and save lives.

To learn more, visit Cloudera.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X. Cloudera and associated marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cloudera, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Jess Hohn-Cabana
cloudera@v2comms.com