Benefits

There are many benefits of a data marketplace. We can divide the benefits into three groups based on the constituency supported.

Data consumers get one place to go for any type of external data they need, rather than pulling data from multiple data storefronts. They also get a chance to see and, in some cases, play with the data before they purchase it. This builds confidence in their purchase and allows them to filter the data and purchase only what they need. They can also set up marketplace accounts and assign internal users rights to browse and/or purchase data on behalf of their department or the company. Finally, data marketplaces can deliver data to any destination in the format required, reducing data integration work for data consumers.

Data providers get a graphical interface for onboarding data, creating data products, and defining terms and pricing. They also get to define access controls—who can see each product and who can’t and what level of access they can receive for what length of time. Once a data consumer makes a purchase and defines the target endpoint, the seller can create a pipeline to automatically deliver the content. Most data marketplaces also enable sellers to offer value-added services, such as data quality scores, data clean rooms, PII masking, and schema change detection.

Data operators get a turnkey system for running a data marketplace rather than building one from scratch, saving time and money. This makes it easy to create a digital counterpart to the ecosystem they want to support. The best data exchange platforms have many features that create frictionless interactions and transactions among buyers and sellers, such as collaboration, compliance monitoring, and multi-language support. But they also make it easy for people to launch and operate a data marketplace, including onboarding templates and usage monitoring reports.