Amazon Web Services launches AWS Data Exchange for qualified third-party data

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its AWS Data Exchange, a service designed to help customers find, subscribe to, and use third-party data in the cloud.

Targeted at customers including enterprises, scientific researchers, and academic institutions, the Data Exchange, according to AWS, has been designed to remove previous barriers customers faced when subscribing to third-party data, such as coding several disparate APIs, waiting weeks to receive shipped physical media, or managing disparate billing relationships and licensing agreements.

"Customers have asked us for an easier way to find, subscribe to, and integrate diverse data sets into the applications, analytics, and machine-learning models they're running on AWS. Unfortunately, the way customers exchange data hasn't evolved much in the last 20 years," said AWS Data Exchange general manager Stephen Orban.

"AWS Data Exchange gives our customers the ability to quickly integrate third-party data in the workloads they're migrating to the cloud, while giving qualified data providers a modern and secure way to package, deliver, and reach the millions of AWS customers worldwide."

Reuters, Change Healthcare, Dun & Bradstreet, Foursquare, Deloitte, and Pitney Bowes are among some of 80 qualified data providers that have been named as initial participants of the service where they will use the service to publish free or paid products under the terms of use they specify. They will also be able to issue private offers with custom terms for specific AWS customers.

WAS has touted the service will remove the need for participating providers to build and maintain infrastructure for data storage, delivery, billing, and entitling.

See also: AWS introduces Savings Plans in attempt to make cloud instance billing not terrible (TechRepublic)

Customers will be able to access third-party data by subscribing to the data of their interest via the AWS Marketplace, which contains more than 1,000 data-based products. Once subscribed, AWS said customers will be able to use the AWS Data Exchange API or console to ingest data they subscribe to directly into Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Each time a provider publishes a new revision of their data, AWS Data Exchange will notify subscribers.

In July, Australia's Data Republic created a solution to help facilitate data sharing projects, without the need to move data. 

The Cloud Suite is designed to make it possible to facilitate multi-party data sharing projects without needing to move, transform, or load data outside of the organisation's own secured AWS environments.

Data Republic CEO Danny Gilligan said this capability gives companies the chance to accelerate data innovation while reducing risk and information security overheads.

"Using the Customer Cloud Suite there is no load, no transformation, and no movement of data when collaborating with a partner via Data Republic," he said. "All data access and analysis is secured and controlled in your existing AWS account.

"It's our goal to make it simpler and more secure for organisations to perform data collaboration projects."

Updated 15 November 2019, 3:03pm AEST: Clarification that Data Republic did not create a place on AWS.

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