Apache Iceberg Open Table Format was released in the community with many features, but became popular due to interoperability. This interoperability makes Iceberg vendor-agnostic and SQL engine-agnostic.
Iceberg REST Catalog (IRC) made interoperability smooth and simple. IRC can solve integration-related challenges in big data analytics ecosystems. This becomes so important, especially in the Data Mesh framework, where you have multiple data publishers and consumers connected through a central governance platform. Using IRC, companies can save costs on the data redundancies, compute, and operational overhead.