Five reasons why businesses should host their own private data exchange
by Geoff Soon, MD, South Asia, Snowflake
Data is increasingly becoming a new form of currency for modern businesses. The insights that these businesses can quickly uncover from seemingly endless volumes of data are delivering a competitive advantage. McKinsey found that, among companies they surveyed, the ones that experienced the highest overall growth could attribute much of that boost to data and analytics.
Data sharing is a key aspect of achieving a competitive advantage. It requires a data warehousing solution that is simple, easy, allows for more valuable insights from live and current data, and enables companies to share data with a widening universe of consumers safely. Analysts estimate that data warehousing in the Asia Pacific region will grow at a CAGR of 15% between 2019 and 2025 due to the rapid growth of IT infrastructure, increases in data centres, and wide adoption of cloud technologies.
We are observing companies in the region utilising data-sharing capabilities to make data available without copying it between companies. This eliminates the period that data consumers are exposed to stale or inconsistent data by enabling companies to share live data sets in real time from the data warehouse. However, we have learned that, for these companies, locating and sharing data within their own organisations can be more difficult than sourcing external data. It has become an urgent priority to have a 'walled garden' to securely list and share data internally, as well as with customers, partners and suppliers.
A private data exchange solves this issue. It can be company-branded, and businesses would have control over who is granted access as well as what data assets are listed. This allows for seamless discovery of data for all stakeholders.
Beyond these important benefits, there are five reasons companies in the region should consider hosting their own private data exchange:
Facilitate internal data discovery
Medium and large enterprises have been looking for a simple way to have an internal data catalogue for a long time. Companies have tried it all from enterprise search and portals to master data management and data cataloguing or crawling. Yet a solution to control access to data, on that is easy to deploy and achieves widespread adoption, remains elusive. Existing solutions have tackled the problem from the bottom up , but this often leads to the gathering of outdated or inaccurate data, as well as access control concerns.
A crowdsourced, internal marketplace for data is a better solution that enables any user to list valuable data assets that they plan to keep current. Companies continue to coordinate access controls, including those who have immediate access to view data versus those who must request access.
This approach helps organisations overcome the challenges that have slowed the adoption of enterprise data cataloguing by combining the benefits of crowdsourcing, while ensuring data quality, and providing the right level of centralised control and coordination.
Streamline physical and digital data supply chains
Once you have a private data exchange for internal departments, the exchange can be opened up to physical and digital supply chain suppliers. For example, sharing inventory data about stock levels and product consumption with suppliers can help them improve how it serves the business. Digital data providers can also add data to the exchange that is immediately useable and connects with enterprise data.
Organisations such as hedge funds, that can evaluate over 1,000 data sets per year from many external sources, benefit from a private data exchange. This enables them to connect with purchased data and evaluate new data assets. These organisations can have potential data suppliers list their data on the private exchange and shop for data in a private data store. This type of arrangement can provide a much greater depth and fresher data, which reinforces trust and transparency in these relationships.
Create a data community
Most companies have customers and other companies they are partners with, and are seeking ways to make those relationships more efficient and profitable. A great way to improve these relationships is to enable a secure, two-way exchange of data.
This is challenging to accomplish, as companies share only limited sets of data via APIs, FTPs*, dashboards, or basic file sharing, which comes at great cost, high data latency, and some security risk. Additionally, data localisation laws in countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, or broad data privacy laws like we see in Thailand and the Philippines, are inhibiting the flow of data across borders.
To achieve this exchange of data, companies can host a private data exchange and invite these stakeholders to participate. These external stakeholders would consume data from the host and provide secure data, either directly to the host or by listing it for other participants in the ecosystem to access.
Large organisations depend on partner companies and their customers, so sharing data between these external parties can allow for the development of rich, collaborative data ecosystems. Participants can securely discover, combine, and enrich data assets to serve a common, large customer, or to form new partnerships that may lead to opportunities to sell secure views of data to other participants in the ecosystem.
Monetise your data
Raw data assets are generally too unpolished, and full of potentially sensitive data to sell outright to other companies. The data needs to be cleaned, stripped of identifying information and aggregated, among other data enrichments, before it can be shared with another party.
A private data exchange can be a great place to discover, assemble, clean, and enrich data to monetise it. IDC noted at the beginning of this year that organisations in the Asia Pacific region are emphasising data privacy and security as digital transformation projects mature and innovative data monetisation models become more popular.
A large enterprise on a fully private exchange can assemble data of value to another company when it is properly cleaned and processed. Alternatively, participants in a private data exchange can work together to join their data sets and create a useful data product that would not be possible for one company alone.
Connect your industry
If a private data exchange takes off, it could become the standard place for an entire industry to exchange and monetise data. If more than one viable exchange emerges in an industry, the respective hosts of these exchanges could decide to partner and “cross-tunnel” assets between their exchanges to achieve critical mass, or remain competitors.
Although it is possible for industry coalitions to host private data exchanges, it is more likely that one or two large players in each industry will develop their own at a sufficient rate to become the de facto data exchange for their industry. This provides a strong incentive for companies that want to become pioneers in data for their industries to start building their exchanges now and open them up to their suppliers, customers, and partners.
*APIs are application programming interfaces, software that connects separate platforms together. FTPs refer to file transfer protocols, ways to transfer files privately.
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| Source: Snowflake. Soon. |
Data sharing is a key aspect of achieving a competitive advantage. It requires a data warehousing solution that is simple, easy, allows for more valuable insights from live and current data, and enables companies to share data with a widening universe of consumers safely. Analysts estimate that data warehousing in the Asia Pacific region will grow at a CAGR of 15% between 2019 and 2025 due to the rapid growth of IT infrastructure, increases in data centres, and wide adoption of cloud technologies.
We are observing companies in the region utilising data-sharing capabilities to make data available without copying it between companies. This eliminates the period that data consumers are exposed to stale or inconsistent data by enabling companies to share live data sets in real time from the data warehouse. However, we have learned that, for these companies, locating and sharing data within their own organisations can be more difficult than sourcing external data. It has become an urgent priority to have a 'walled garden' to securely list and share data internally, as well as with customers, partners and suppliers.
A private data exchange solves this issue. It can be company-branded, and businesses would have control over who is granted access as well as what data assets are listed. This allows for seamless discovery of data for all stakeholders.
Beyond these important benefits, there are five reasons companies in the region should consider hosting their own private data exchange:
Facilitate internal data discovery
Medium and large enterprises have been looking for a simple way to have an internal data catalogue for a long time. Companies have tried it all from enterprise search and portals to master data management and data cataloguing or crawling. Yet a solution to control access to data, on that is easy to deploy and achieves widespread adoption, remains elusive. Existing solutions have tackled the problem from the bottom up , but this often leads to the gathering of outdated or inaccurate data, as well as access control concerns.
A crowdsourced, internal marketplace for data is a better solution that enables any user to list valuable data assets that they plan to keep current. Companies continue to coordinate access controls, including those who have immediate access to view data versus those who must request access.
This approach helps organisations overcome the challenges that have slowed the adoption of enterprise data cataloguing by combining the benefits of crowdsourcing, while ensuring data quality, and providing the right level of centralised control and coordination.
Streamline physical and digital data supply chains
Once you have a private data exchange for internal departments, the exchange can be opened up to physical and digital supply chain suppliers. For example, sharing inventory data about stock levels and product consumption with suppliers can help them improve how it serves the business. Digital data providers can also add data to the exchange that is immediately useable and connects with enterprise data.
Organisations such as hedge funds, that can evaluate over 1,000 data sets per year from many external sources, benefit from a private data exchange. This enables them to connect with purchased data and evaluate new data assets. These organisations can have potential data suppliers list their data on the private exchange and shop for data in a private data store. This type of arrangement can provide a much greater depth and fresher data, which reinforces trust and transparency in these relationships.
Create a data community
Most companies have customers and other companies they are partners with, and are seeking ways to make those relationships more efficient and profitable. A great way to improve these relationships is to enable a secure, two-way exchange of data.
This is challenging to accomplish, as companies share only limited sets of data via APIs, FTPs*, dashboards, or basic file sharing, which comes at great cost, high data latency, and some security risk. Additionally, data localisation laws in countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, or broad data privacy laws like we see in Thailand and the Philippines, are inhibiting the flow of data across borders.
To achieve this exchange of data, companies can host a private data exchange and invite these stakeholders to participate. These external stakeholders would consume data from the host and provide secure data, either directly to the host or by listing it for other participants in the ecosystem to access.
Large organisations depend on partner companies and their customers, so sharing data between these external parties can allow for the development of rich, collaborative data ecosystems. Participants can securely discover, combine, and enrich data assets to serve a common, large customer, or to form new partnerships that may lead to opportunities to sell secure views of data to other participants in the ecosystem.
Monetise your data
Raw data assets are generally too unpolished, and full of potentially sensitive data to sell outright to other companies. The data needs to be cleaned, stripped of identifying information and aggregated, among other data enrichments, before it can be shared with another party.
A private data exchange can be a great place to discover, assemble, clean, and enrich data to monetise it. IDC noted at the beginning of this year that organisations in the Asia Pacific region are emphasising data privacy and security as digital transformation projects mature and innovative data monetisation models become more popular.
A large enterprise on a fully private exchange can assemble data of value to another company when it is properly cleaned and processed. Alternatively, participants in a private data exchange can work together to join their data sets and create a useful data product that would not be possible for one company alone.
Connect your industry
If a private data exchange takes off, it could become the standard place for an entire industry to exchange and monetise data. If more than one viable exchange emerges in an industry, the respective hosts of these exchanges could decide to partner and “cross-tunnel” assets between their exchanges to achieve critical mass, or remain competitors.
Although it is possible for industry coalitions to host private data exchanges, it is more likely that one or two large players in each industry will develop their own at a sufficient rate to become the de facto data exchange for their industry. This provides a strong incentive for companies that want to become pioneers in data for their industries to start building their exchanges now and open them up to their suppliers, customers, and partners.
*APIs are application programming interfaces, software that connects separate platforms together. FTPs refer to file transfer protocols, ways to transfer files privately.
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