Richard Masters of Virgin Atlantic and Samuel Bonamigo of Databricks join John Furrier at the Databricks Data+AI Summit 2025 on theCUBE. They discuss advancements in data intelligence and artificial intelligence, emphasizing the role of Databricks platforms in transforming business operations.
Masters shares insights into Virgin Atlantic's data strategy, including how they utilize Databricks for a comprehensive view of their operations. They highlight the application of VibeCoding for prototyping within their development process. Bonamigo provides context on the growing impact of Databricks across the EMEA region, noting the success of the summit with over 20,000 attendees and significant customer testimonials.
Key takeaways from the conversation include the importance of democratizing data intelligence tools, as underscored by Bonamigo's enthusiasm for the Databricks free edition. Masters emphasizes the operational efficiencies gained from using serverless computing and Unity, allowing for precise return on investment calculations, and the benefits of Databricks' data engineering that enhance productivity and creativity.
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Richard Masters, Virgin Atlantic & Samuel Bonamigo, Databricks
Richard Masters of Virgin Atlantic and Samuel Bonamigo of Databricks join John Furrier at the Databricks Data+AI Summit 2025 on theCUBE. They discuss advancements in data intelligence and artificial intelligence, emphasizing the role of Databricks platforms in transforming business operations.
Masters shares insights into Virgin Atlantic's data strategy, including how they utilize Databricks for a comprehensive view of their operations. They highlight the application of VibeCoding for prototyping within their development process. Bonamigo provides context on the growing impact of Databricks across the EMEA region, noting the success of the summit with over 20,000 attendees and significant customer testimonials.
Key takeaways from the conversation include the importance of democratizing data intelligence tools, as underscored by Bonamigo's enthusiasm for the Databricks free edition. Masters emphasizes the operational efficiencies gained from using serverless computing and Unity, allowing for precise return on investment calculations, and the benefits of Databricks' data engineering that enhance productivity and creativity.
Richard Masters, Virgin Atlantic & Samuel Bonamigo, Databricks
Richard Masters
VP, Data & AIVirgin Atlantic
Samuel Bonamigo
SVP & GM, Emea DatabricksDatabricks
Richard Masters, vice president of data and AI at Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., and Samuel Bonamigo, senior vice president and general manager of EMEA Databricks at Databricks Inc., join theCUBE’s John Furrier at the Databricks Data + AI Summit 2025. The conversation explores how modern data platforms are reshaping business operations and unlocking real-time value.
Masters shares how Virgin Atlantic leverages Databricks for full operational visibility and rapid prototyping with VibeCoding. Bonamigo highlights Databricks’ momentum across EMEA and the ...Read more
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What is the scope and scale of the business that Databricks operates in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region?add
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Richard Masters, Virgin Atlantic & Samuel Bonamigo, Databricks
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>> Hello everyone. Welcome back to theCube's Live coverage here in San Francisco for Databricks's Data plus AI Summit. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. This next segment is really about the data intelligence and AI in action with a Databricks customer, Virgin Atlantic. Richard Masters, VP of Data and AI has got a lot of great stories. Samuel Bonamigo is the SVP and General Manager of the EMEA Group at Databricks Europe, Middle East and Africa. Samuel, great to see you. Come on, Richard. Can't wait to dig in. Thanks for coming on.
Samuel Bonamigo
>> Thank you for having us.>> Okay, so first of all, obviously little international customer things, so before we get into the customer, talk about the business that you run. What's the scope and scale of European, Europe, Middle East and Africa for you? What's the business look like? How big is it? What's it look like?
Samuel Bonamigo
>> Thank you for asking me first and for having us. I've been working for Databricks almost three years now. We have seen the momentum in Europe and I like to highlight also the success of this conference. It's the largest data and AI conference in the world. We welcome more than 20,000 attendees, more than 350 customer testimonials in Europe, Middle East and Africa, came with the largest, I will say, cohort of customers, more than 1600 people from Europe, Middle East and Africa this week. We doubled the size compared to a year ago and thanks to Virgin Atlantic, they were on the main stage this morning. It's outstanding customer stories. Absolutely pleased to be here and talk about all the innovations on the data intelligence platform.>> Well, Sam, I think we'll do a follow-up interview because with Unity catalog and Iceberg and the standards, the sovereign cloud picture gets a little bit cleaner. We'll come back, we'll put a pin in that. Richard, thanks for coming on. Okay. Scope the data platform that you have. Obviously a lot of customers love the Unity, they love the Iceberg, they love the open table formats. They love the interoperability to run their data wherever it's stored, run their AI on it and get the advantages. Lay out what you have and what the size and scope is.
Richard Masters
>> We've moved a lot of our data into Databricks itself, into Unity. You talk about the flight, the operation, you've got our customer data, commercial all going in there so that we can really join it all together and build that view of what's really going on in the run-up to a flight and post-flight as well and on the day. It really gives us that kind of full 360 of what's going on in the operation.>> On the development side, the big theme here is developing apps, which VibeCode, I'm sure that VibeCoding works well in the culture of your company because it's a cool vibe, right? Charismatic founder, but in all practicality, that's front-end where it's going to get better. I'm sure you're thinking about what that might enable and how you integrate that into production. VibeCoding is great, but now you got to integrate it in.
Richard Masters
>> I'm incredibly excited about Databricks apps and have been for a while. What we are using the VibeCoding aspect for at the moment is for that kind of prototype design. You could be in workshops and you can just start to talk to your agents, whether it's ChatGPT or copilot or on the platform as well, and just say, "I want to change a field here. I want to change a drop-down here," and it just happens and then you can take it away and really productionize it. Having that all-in-one system is amazing.>> I have to ask you one of my fine moments that I liked in the keynote, very nuanced point, but it jumped out at me, was the comment around the data engineer doesn't have to go to do that grunt assignment, that operational rockfest. That's my words, but there's a point where it's like all that work, they get called into these meetings that solve a problem when they could be building, I forget the exact quote, but the vibe was, you can be more productive and creative. You don't have to be in these meetings solving these, putting out these fires. What does Databricks do to help that side of the business? Data engineering still is going on. Can you share your thoughts on how life gets easier or how it changes for you?
Richard Masters
>> Yeah, that creativity is then available to the engineers as well as our business stakeholders and analysts. People that are using the platform can be building their view of insight or even some base data models themselves and share that so much more easily with our engineers and our product teams, so then turning that into something really production becomes just so much easier.>> You're coming out of this event, what's your goals now that you've seen it? You obviously were featured, but you got to be excited. What's the game plan when you head across the pond, as they say? We're in California. It's really more across the U.S. and then the pond.
Richard Masters
>> Keep building more of the stuff. Agent Bricks for one, we started to experiment with those, having those in. Our whole strategy is around this mixture of experts and agents supporting where we can. I talked about that on stage with summarizing our safety reporting. More of those components we're going to be building and then just integrating with various apps across the business.>> The cost side too. That was a key point. Everyone doesn't like to talk about the numbers, but at the end of the day, is economics involved? What's your thoughts on the whole cost performance thing?
Richard Masters
>> The great thing now with Serverless and with Unity is I can take a data product and go right from the top in the gold right through to the serverless compute, so we can really actually measure ROI. We know how many people are using it, we know what it's cost us to build, we know what it's costing us to run every day on a product by product basis. It makes everything really simple as a calculation for me and for my CFO.>> Sam, you've got to be pretty pumped that Richard's on stage, obviously great momentum for you guys and your area. What is the adoption rates? What are some of the business trends that you're seeing? Are there a ton of POCs out there? We're hearing in the enterprise, a lot of POC.
Samuel Bonamigo
>> EMEA, by far, one of the fastest growing region for the company. I'm pleased to see Virgin and Richard on stage this morning. If you go a little bit around here at the conference, you're going to see lots of EMEA customers highlighted like Bayer, like Adidas, like Bolt or Repsol, as an example. We are absolutely pleased because we see the momentum. I like also what Ali mentioned this morning with Databricks free edition because the title of the conference is Data Intelligence for All, and it's all about democratization. Today, the message is if you are a university, engineering school or an individual and you want to try and use Databricks data intelligence platform, let's do it. It's free. We talk a lot about the knowledge because we have to democratize and make sure the knowledge on how to leverage the platform and AI goes across the different countries and it's super important for us to democratize the usage of the platform.>> I mean, democratization has always been a theme of Databricks covering it from the first principle days, early days that with open source, obviously that's translated in. I mean, you're even talking about democratizing OLTP. Okay. I've never heard that one before. That's a good one. How does that impact you guys? Obviously, OLTP, for example, I mean Postgres having that in Native, there's a lot of OLTP out there, but Native in AI is interesting. What's the impact to you?
Richard Masters
>> It actually starts with a simplified data engineering for us. Let's imagine you've built a customer analytical view in our Azure instance of Databricks. We have AWS for our website. You could then Delta share to a new Databricks instance on AWS under OLTP and you use that same data model to have 40 millisecond response time or 300 millisecond response time to get that customer detail into the website without reorganizing everything, without re-engineering things. Really excited to try those sort of use cases to reuse what we've done in the analytical space into operational and more real-time aspects as well, as well as using that to get it into the system.>> All right, so you've got the relationship with Databricks. Good check, good customer example. What's the pressure from the top, the application, the users, because everyone wants generative experiences, so you got to enable that generative responses, that low latency. What are some of the things you're seeing or anticipating coming at runtime, that's my word, runtime. At the end of the day, you got to enable things to happen, whether it's Vibecoding an app, or rolling your own experience.
Richard Masters
>> Yeah. The platform helps us do all that, everything being an endpoint, which you can plug it in wherever you need it to go. What we're really finding is previously non-technical users using the assistant with the data intelligence part to ask questions, understand how that really translates into code and the data and the metadata there. They're figuring out SQL as they go and they're managing to focus on, is it right? That kind of real-time generative response lets them really focus on the outcomes. We're seeing things go from weeks to days and hours to solve things and results.>> Having that metadata layer-
Richard Masters
>> Yeah.->> is killer.
Richard Masters
>> Yeah, really brings it together.
Samuel Bonamigo
>> Richard mentioned multiple times the simplicity of the usage, the fact that we are more and more easy to use. I have been also very impressed and maybe you could say a word about the speed of the transformation because what they did, they did the transformation in few months, I would say. It's super impressive and it creates tons of efficiency, back to your point.>> Yeah. Well congratulations, Samuel, have a great success and your business and customer on stage. Richard, I'll give you the final word. Advice to other practitioners who are either going to jump into Agent Bricks and apps or folks that are getting ready to accelerate that mission. What's your advice to those people out there, practitioners and executives?
Richard Masters
>> They're all quite jumps in ways of working with things abstracted a bit more. The curiosity and creativity in your team to embrace those is absolutely critical. That's what we've got at Virgin. It's really exciting.>> Awesome. Guys.
Samuel Bonamigo
>> Go do it. Don't wait.>> Okay. What's your goals this year? Double down on everything. Ride the wave.
Samuel Bonamigo
>> My goal is really to accelerate, I will say, the usage and the penetration of Databricks in EMEA and going back to what has been discussed this morning and it's going to be discussed tomorrow, tons of innovation. We have to share the knowledge, communicate, explain, and make sure all the markets and industries are getting it.>> Yeah, great job.
Samuel Bonamigo
>> efficiency.>> International expansions, global economy. Databricks is hitting on all cylinders here. theCUBE got the live coverage here. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.
