The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Data Exchange

In this Briefing Note we look at the AWS Data Exchange that was introduced by AWS. The cloud continues to see adoption in the capital markets, especially when it comes to using data and analytics. By adding data to the compute, storage, and analytic tools, the cloud becomes an increasingly important component of the overall digital experience for many financial institutions.

Context

On November 13, 2019, AWS launched AWS Data Exchange. In preparation for the release, Celent received two briefings over the course of 2019 by relevant subject matter experts and the product leads developing and running AWS Data Exchange.

Overview of AWS Data Exchange

The public cloud provides the storage, computing, and native tools for advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI. AWS Data Exchange offers a managed service for data subscribers and providers to exchange traditional, emergent, and alternative data through the AWS Marketplace.

From product description, conversations and demos, it appears that AWS Data Exchange provides a transparent marketplace for data providers and data subscribers in a fashion that intends to limit business friction. A data marketplace is a natural offering for a cloud provider. Data sets have grown, demand for that data has grown; but the discovery mechanisms have splintered.

The AWS Data Exchange allows data providers and subscribers to distribute and source data products. It provides data producers new channels of distribution for traditional and alternative data. It allows tools for data producers to more effectively get data in front of potential users via managed services.

From a data consumer perspective, it offers a marketplace for data scientists, quants, modelers, traders, and investors to expand their access to difficult to source data. This data might be from an incumbent data provider in another industry vertical that might be interesting for those creating models in the capital markets. On the other end of the spectrum, this could be data from smaller, emergent data sources that have had limited ability to show their data assets to a broader universe of quants and data scientists.

The AWS Data Exchange is launching with over a thousand data products from exchanges, broker/dealers, alternative data providers, and emergent data sources. See the screenshot below:

About Briefing Notes

A Briefing Note is a type of Celent Insight launched in 2019 to provide research clients with timely updates on vendor / fintech solutions and strategies. Celent does not charge any fees to write a briefing note, and vendors do not have to be Celent research clients to be eligible for one. However, Celent analysts are selective and publish a limited number of notes throughout a year about briefings they found particularly interesting; the decision whether to write a note is at the Celent analyst’s discretion. Vendors have the opportunity to check the draft before it’s published to ensure we accurately represent the facts and don’t disclose anything confidential, but otherwise do not have editorial control. Celent has not undertaken any additional due diligence beyond the briefing itself.