Pillars & Core Principles
Building a successful SaaS application or data product on Databricks requires more than selecting a deployment model. These five pillars represent the architectural foundations and operational principles that enable your solution to scale securely, operate efficiently, and deliver value to customers.
The Five Pillars
| Pillar | Description |
|---|---|
| Governance | Unity Catalog patterns for multi-tenant data isolation, access control, and compliance |
| Cost Management | Tagging strategies, budget controls, and usage attribution for customer billing and margin analysis |
| Scale & Limits | Workspace, account, and cloud provider boundaries with design implications for capacity planning |
| Automation | Infrastructure as code with Terraform and Databricks Asset Bundles for repeatable deployments |
| Customer and User Onboarding | Workflows for provisioning customers and users with group-based access management |
Why These Pillars Matter
Governance as a Foundation
Multi-tenancy, data isolation, and access control are not optional considerations—they are architectural requirements. Strong governance enables you to serve multiple customers securely while maintaining compliance and auditability.
Cost Management as a Business Requirement
Understanding per-customer costs is essential for pricing accuracy, margin analysis, and scaling profitably. Without proper attribution through tagging, you cannot measure the true economics of your product.
Scale & Limits as Design Constraints
Every platform has boundaries. Understanding workspace limits, account quotas, and cloud provider constraints upfront prevents costly architectural rework as you scale from pilot to production.
Automation as an Operational Imperative
Manual processes do not scale. Infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and automated provisioning are essential for operating efficiently at scale.
Onboarding as a Customer Experience
How you provision customers and users directly impacts time-to-value. Group-based access management and automated workflows enable seamless onboarding without operational overhead.
Cross-Pillar Considerations
These pillars do not operate in isolation. Effective architectures integrate them:
- Governance + Cost Management — Tag enforcement policies ensure all compute resources have proper attribution tags
- Scale + Automation — Infrastructure as code enables rapid provisioning while respecting limits and quotas
- Governance + Onboarding — Group-based access management simplifies user provisioning while maintaining security
- Cost + Onboarding — Customer-level tagging at provisioning time enables accurate billing from day one
Getting Started
Choose the pillar most relevant to your current architectural challenge:
- Need to design tenant isolation? → Start with Governance
- Need to understand per-customer costs? → Start with Cost Management
- Planning capacity for growth? → Start with Scale & Limits
- Want to codify your infrastructure? → Start with Automation
- Building customer provisioning workflows? → Start with Customer and User Onboarding
What's Next
- Governance — Unity Catalog patterns for data isolation
- Cost Management — Tagging and attribution strategies
- Scale & Limits — Platform boundaries and quotas
- Automation — Infrastructure as code with Terraform and DABs
- Customer and User Onboarding — Provisioning workflows