Data fuels a modern enterprise. While there’s no shortage of internal data (IDC expects that the amount of data created in 2023 will reach over 100ZB, one trillion gigabytes), most organizations also need to turn to external data in order to execute a variety of business processes. For decades, information services companies and data brokers have provided much needed datasets to service these needs. In the past 10 years, many start-up companies have looked at this market, working to fulfill the need for new areas of data and improve on the information gathering and transmitting processes. In addition, a growing number of companies from outside of the information service market are looking to monetize their data assets.
What’s available? It seems the sky is the limit! IDC tracks more than 500 vendors working in this space. A sampling of them appear in our Data-as-a-Service Market Glance.
In the data market, there are a wide variety of providers. Some position themselves for a specific use case, function or industry while others try to appeal to a wider variety of potential buyers. This data is collected with differing methods, from dedicated human researchers, to IoT, web-scraping and other technological tools. The datasets can also be exchanged in a variety of ways. Because of this heterogeneity, IDC chooses to use a taxonomy that groups data providers by what we call a ‘data domain’ – grouped by the subject that the dataset is about.
There’s also a growing role for Data Marketplaces. While 19.7% of respondents in our most recent Data Buyers Survey said they purchase data directly from data providers, 31.5% make purchases via open or closed marketplaces. It is a space we at IDC are watching closely.
Learn more about IDC’s Data-as-a-Service outlook, and read the complete Market Glance document:
