Ecosystem data marketplace

What is an ecosystem data marketplace?

An ecosystem data marketplace seamlessly and securely shares data between partners within an ecosystem through an intuitive self-service experience, enabling closer collaboration, greater innovation and improved efficiency. Access is controlled to ensure confidentiality and protection of intellectual property and business data.

Sometimes called data exchanges, ecosystem data marketplaces can be created and managed by a single organization, a consortium of players, or an independent third-party orchestrator. Data can be provided for free under commercial agreements, or monetized, depending on business needs. Ecosystem data marketplaces can be bidirectional, with data exchanged between players, or unidirectional with it flowing from a single source. Data can be real-time, and is delivered as any type of data asset, such as data products, tabular data or visualizations.

Ecosystem data marketplaces have multiple use cases. They can be deployed to cover an organization’s supply chain, a manufacturer’s partners/customers, organizations operating in the same physical space (such as a port), or even competing organizations in an industry looking to work together to meet common goals, such as sustainability and decarbonization.  

What is a data space?

As part of the European Union’s objective of making more data available for access and reuse, it has launched the concept of Common European Data Spaces, a form of ecosystem data marketplace. These will cover a number of strategic fields including health, manufacturing, energy, and mobility. While each sector’s unique needs will shape its data space, they will share common data infrastructures and governance frameworks, which facilitate data pooling, access and sharing, while preserving confidentiality and security.

What are the benefits of an ecosystem data marketplace?

Ecosystem data marketplaces increase the collective value of the data they contain and deliver a range of benefits to organizations involved:

• Stronger relationships with business partners, customers and other organizations
• Greater collaboration around common goals, such as decarbonization
• Data monetization to create new revenue streams
• Increased supply chain collaboration to drive efficiency through transparency and real-time data access
• Optimized operations, such as through monitoring of equipment in customer premises, enabling predictive maintenance and fuelling digital twins
• Greater efficiency and productivity by automating operations around data
• Creation of a single source of truth to build trust and eliminate data silos
• Improved decision-making through access to more complete data from across the ecosystem 
• What are the challenges to creating a successful ecosystem data marketplace?

Depending on their structure, there are a range of challenges to building a successful ecosystem data marketplace:

• Complexity. If data is being exchanged between different companies, with their own IT systems and standards, ensuring it is available in the right formats for easy consumption is vital.
• Data quality. Data on ecosystem data marketplaces can underpin real-time decision-making, by both humans and AI. It must therefore be reliable and high-quality to deliver trust.
• Confidentiality. When sharing data externally, ensuring confidentiality and protecting intellectual property (IP) is critical 
• Security and access management. Data must be protected from unauthorized access
• Legal concerns. Particularly if data is shared between competing organizations, regulators may have concerns that this leads to anticompetitive behavior   
• Cultural issues. Organizations may not have a culture based around collaborating closely with others in their ecosystem, particularly if they are competitors. Breaking down barriers to sharing and working together can be difficult. 

What are the components of an ecosystem data marketplace?

Ecosystem data marketplaces rely on specific capabilities:

• An easy-to-use self-service interface, similar to that of an e-commerce site
• The ability to connect to all, or part of the ecosystem’s data, whatever system or storage space it resides in
• Agreed metadata and data exchange standards to ensure data quality and to build trust
• Clear, transparent governance processes to protect confidentiality and data integrity 
• Data lineage to monitor data usage across the ecosystem
• Built-in data contracts and SLAs to set out how data can be used
• Data monetization features if data is to be charged for 
• Intuitive search and data discovery to connect consumers with relevant data
• The ability to collaborate through the data marketplace to drive innovation
• Capabilities to provide data in multiple ways, such as through APIs and data visualizations, as well as via easily consumable data products 
• Robust security through access management capabilities to control and manage user access to the platform and its data assets