Teradata links Autonomous Knowledge Platform to OneLake

Teradata has integrated its Autonomous Knowledge Platform with Microsoft OneLake, letting customers run Teradata AI workloads on data stored in OneLake.

The integration gives Teradata users read access to OneLake tables through Apache Iceberg application programming interfaces, allowing them to analyse data in place rather than move or copy it between systems.

The move addresses a long-standing problem in corporate analytics and AI projects, where data is often shifted across platforms through extract, transform and load pipelines. Those pipelines can add delays, increase storage use and create extra governance work when organisations maintain multiple copies of the same data.

Under the arrangement, Microsoft Entra ID handles cross-platform authentication, while access controls remain native to each environment. Customers with data in both systems can join and analyse it without first consolidating it into a single platform.

That means organisations using Microsoft Fabric and Teradata can query OneLake data directly for analytical work, including joins, feature engineering pipelines and tactical queries tied to service-level agreements.

Open standards

The integration is built on Apache Iceberg, the open table format widely used in data lake and analytics environments. By relying on Iceberg interfaces, Teradata is positioning the connection around interoperability rather than a proprietary access method.

For Microsoft, the tie-up adds another external analytics option within the Fabric and OneLake ecosystem. For Teradata, it provides a route into customer environments that already store large volumes of data in Microsoft's cloud data layer.

Read access to Microsoft OneLake tables through Teradata is now available.

Sumeet Arora, Chief Product Officer at Teradata, described the integration as a way to reduce the burden of moving data before analysis.

"Moving data to analyze it is a constraint that adds cost and complexity without adding value. Bringing Teradata enterprise AI directly to Microsoft OneLake means customers can run the workloads that matter, on the data where it already lives, inside the governance model they've already built. This is a concrete step in making the Autonomous Knowledge Platform work wherever enterprise data exists," said Arora.

AI workloads

The announcement reflects a broader shift in the data market as suppliers try to meet demand for AI tools without forcing customers to redesign storage architectures. As AI projects expand, companies face growing pressure to reduce the time spent preparing and relocating data before models and analytical systems can use it.

Teradata said the OneLake connection fits into its broader effort to support AI use across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The company has framed its Autonomous Knowledge Platform as the layer that provides business context, governance and operational consistency for AI systems working across different data locations.

In practical terms, the OneLake integration removes one step from that process by allowing teams to leave data where it is. That approach could appeal to organisations that want to avoid rebuilding lineage, security rules and management processes for replicated datasets.

Microsoft also described the integration as part of its push to make OneLake a common data foundation for AI work across different tools and suppliers.

"Microsoft OneLake is built to be the unified data foundation for the AI era, connecting organizations with the platforms, tools, and data ecosystems they already trust. Teradata's integration through Apache Iceberg exemplifies the openness and interoperability at the heart of Microsoft Fabric, enabling customers to bring their data together and accelerate their AI transformation without the complexity or rearchitecting around a single vendor," said Borkar.