Intelligent CIO APAC Issue 09 | Page 42

FEATURE : CLOUD SOLUTIONS
A data exchange is essentially a centralized catalogue that contains details of all data sets help by the organization . These could include budget projections and plans from the finance department , records of last quarter ’ s revenues from the sales team , and output and inventory data from the manufacturing facility .
When a staff member wants to run a new query , they can consult the data exchange and determine exactly what is available to them . This can significantly increase

THE CLOUD SHIFTS FROM BEING A RESOURCE TO BEING MORE LIKE AN APPLICATION THAT CAN BE PUT TO WORK WITHIN AN ORGANIZATION .

the value an organization can derive from its data without adding additional workloads on to the IT team .
In some circumstances , it might make sense to open this exchange up to trusted third parties . This could include business partners , suppliers and business consultants . Each will have a clear view of all available data across the organization .
Creating a data marketplace
The concept of a data exchange can be taken even further with the creation of a data marketplace . Here , an organization ’ s data sets can be made publicly visible and available to interested third parties .
A data marketplace can be thought of in the same way as an app store . Software developers submit their apps to the store which is then accessed by interested prospective users . These users can then access the apps , either for free or by paying an agreed fee .
Data marketplace users are then able to combine data sourced from third parties with their own internal data sets to derive insights in new and powerful ways . Such activity would simply not have been possible without the centralized and public marketplace . combined in real time and used to provide a complete and accurate picture of exactly what is going on around the world .
The marketplace also provides a unique opportunity for organizations to monetize their data in new ways . Rather than just regarding it as a resource to be consumed internally , it can be positioned as one that drives an additional source of revenue .
In addition , the data cloud allows users to also share functions , allowing them to develop additional layers of value on top of the raw data . For example , a company that conducts credit risk scoring could provide a service ( function ) that their customers could invoke in a query , passing in the name / ID of a company and returning the credit risk score for that company .
One recent example can be seen in the sharing and use of data around infection rates associated with COVID-19 . Data from multiple sources are being
The result is a data set enriched by the data provider without either party having to exchange their potentially confidential data . This dramatically expands the scope
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