In a world where data volume, variety, and type are exponentially growing, organizations need to collaborate with data of any size and shape. In many cases data is at its most powerful when it can be shared and combined with data that resides outside organizational boundaries with business partners and third parties. For customers, sharing this data in a simple and governed way is challenging. Common data sharing approaches using file transfer protocol (FTP) or web APIs tend to be bespoke development and require infrastructure to manage. These tools do not provide the security or governance required to meet enterprise standards, and they often are not suitable for sharing large datasets. To enable enterprise collaboration, we are excited to unveil Azure Data Share Preview, a new data service for sharing data across organizations.
Simple and safe data sharing
Data professionals in the enterprise can now use Azure Data Share to easily and safely share big data with external organizations in Azure Blob Storage and Azure Data Lake Storage. New services will continue to come online. As a fully managed Azure service, Azure Data Share does not require infrastructure to set up and it scales to meet big data sharing demands. The intuitive interface makes sharing easy and productive, directly from the Azure portal. With just a few clicks data professionals choose which data to share and who to share it with. They can schedule the service to automatically share new or changed data pertaining to specific datasets, as well as stop future updates from flowing through at any time. With Azure Data Share, data professionals have greater control over each data sharing relationship and can govern use by associating term of use with each data share created. To receive the data, recipients must agree to the terms of use specified.
Alongside governance, security is fundamental in Azure Data Share and leverages core Azure security measures to help protect the data.
Enabling data collaboration
Azure Data Share maximizes access to simple and safe data sharing for organizations in many industries. For example, retailers can leverage Azure Data Share to easily share sales inventory and demographic data for demand forecasting and price optimization with their suppliers.
In the finance industry, Microsoft collaborated with Finastra, one of the world’s leading fintechs and provider of the broadest portfolio of financial services software in the world today that spans retail banking, transaction banking, lending, and treasury and capital markets. Finastra is fully integrating Azure Data Share with their open platform, FusionFabric.cloud, to enable seamless distribution of premium datasets to a wider ecosystem of application developers across the FinTech value chain. These datasets have been curated by Finastra over several years, and by leveraging the data distribution capabilities of Azure Data Share, ingestion by app developers and other partners requires simple wrangling, significantly reducing the go to market timeframe and unlocking net new revenue potential for Finastra.
“Our decision to integrate Azure Data Share with Finastra’s FusionFabric.cloud platform is now a great way to further accelerate innovation via an expanded open ecosystem. Our partnership with Microsoft truly provides us with limitless opportunities to drive transformation in Financial Services.”
– Eli Rosner, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Finastra
Next steps
Industries of all types need a simple and safe way to share data. Azure Data Share opens up new opportunities for innovation and insights to drive greater business impact.
- Watch the video about Azure Data Share.
- Get started with documentation.
- Start using Azure Data Share in the Azure portal.