Data Marketplace Use Will Explode

Business analytics initiatives have traditionally focused on analyzing internally generated data such as sales, market surveys and business performance. But increasingly businesses are obtaining data from external sources and using it to supplement and enrich their own data: IDC says that 75 percent of enterprises in 2021 used external data sources to strengthen cross-functional and decision-making capabilities.

This year will see an explosion in the use of data marketplaces to provide businesses with public, third-party data for analytical and machine learning tasks, according to analyst Joe Hilleary in the Eckerson Group report.

Data marketplaces provide a platform where companies can supply and consume data for a fee. Hilleary says demand for third-party is growing while acquiring and using such data “now has a much lower opportunity cost and a clearer value proposition.” That’s because the number of data providers is increasing and the supply of data for sale is growing as more organizations look to monetize their own data assets. And the expanding capabilities of cloud data marketplaces such as the Snowflake Data Marketplace simplifies the process of buying and selling data.