What was the primary reason for Databricks introducing Photon?

The introduction of Photon by Databricks was primarily aimed at enhancing performance and scalability to provide capabilities comparable to those found in data warehouses and data lakes. Photon is a vectorized query engine that drastically improves the speed of SQL queries through advanced optimizations. By leveraging modern hardware features, it allows users to achieve high performance on large datasets, which is particularly crucial for analytics workloads that demand quick responses.

This focus on speed and efficiency aligns with the growing need for real-time analytics and swift data retrieval in business environments, making Photon a powerful tool for organizations that utilize data lakes and need to handle large volumes of data effectively.