by Angela Guess
Gil Elbaz of TechCrunch recently discussed the evolving concept of data markets. He writes, “The term data market brings to mind a traditional structure in which vendors sell data for money. Indeed, this form of market is on the rise with companies large and small jumping in. Think of Azure Data Marketplace (Microsoft), data.com (Salesforce.com), InfoChimps.com, and DataMarket.com. While this model allows organizations to acquire valuable data, the term is evolving to include a variety of forms, each with varying degrees of adoption success. At the heart of it, data markets enable organizations to access data in new ways, where the currency does not only have to be money, but can be in the form of data or insight.”
He goes on, “There is also a trend where companies can outsource certain aspects of data management, especially around reference or canonical datasets, to a third party that specializes in assembling and curating datasets or creating value from data in other ways. As a result, new data economies are being formed where data can be created, accessed, rented, and perpetually maintained in a more simple and affordable way.”
