Amazon Web Services (AWS) has added Data Exchange to its list of stable cloud products. With this service, customers can find, use and subscribe to ‘secure’ third-party data. This data comes from brands like Change Healthcare and Foursquare.
At the time of the launch of the Data Exchange, more than a thousand products containing data from more than eighty data providers were already available, according to Venturebeat. For example, Reuters makes its selection of 2.2 million unique news stories available in multiple languages.
The datasets can then be integrated into applications, analytics and machine learning models that run on AWS. “AWS Data Exchange gives our customers the ability to quickly integrate third-party data in the workloads they’re migrating to the cloud”, says Stephen Orban, general manager of the service.
How it works
Customers can choose from third-party data sources in the AWS Marketplace. After they become subscribers, the Data Exchange API or the console can be used to transfer the data directly to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
If a provider publishes a new version of the data, the customer will be notified via CloudWatch Event. The user can then perform the revision in data lakes, apps and AI models.
The costs of the subscriptions are included in the existing invoices of AWS. Customers can also ask data providers free of charge to deliver existing subscriptions via AWS Data Exchange.
Benefits for data providers
According to AWS, Data Exchange not only has advantages for customers, but also for suppliers of data. Providers no longer need to create and maintain an infrastructure for storage, delivery and invoicing.
In Data Exchange, they get the possibility to publish free and paid products under their own conditions. Private offers can also be made for specific AWS customers. Data Exchange then delivers daily, weekly and monthly reports with details about the subscription activity.
However, AWS has set limits on the type of data that can be shared. Sensitive personal data and information that is not already “legally and publicly available” is not welcome on the platform.