In the previous blog, we used the opening of A Tale of Two Cities to introduce why now is the time for a new approach to cross-enterprise data exchange.
In this blog, we revisit A Tale of Two Cities close as we seek “a far, far better” way to exchange data.
What does a data exchange platform do?
From a business point of view, a data exchange platform helps you:
- Become business-led from negotiation through renewal.
- Ensure you meet user access, data sovereignty, governance, auditing, and other business requirements.
- Deliver faster, then review and renew quickly when the time is right
From a technical point of view, it helps you:
- Align your business, technical, and security activities from start to finish.
- Automate transformation, security, privacy, consent, scale, failover, and other technical requirements.
- Complete the entire job with less effort.
As a result, you can be more;
Successful: Your contract agreements and business teams drive technology delivery, not the other way around
Consistent: All your data transfers leverage the same methods and technology, making them easier to create and support.
Vigilant: An end-to-end data exchange integrates management and security capabilities to provide the visibility and control you require.
Transparent: You always know what’s happening and can highlight and avoid trouble before it hits.
How does a data exchange platform work?
Cloud-based data exchange platforms automate all five critical data-sharing phases, including
- Negotiation Phase: Turn your business agreements into technical requirements.
- Build Phase: Develop, test, and deploy all required connections and transformations.
- Run Phase: Execute your feeds reliably, at scale.
- Manage Phase: Monitor activities and quickly respond if problems arise.
- Review & Renew Phase: Keep up-to-date with ever-changing business and technical needs.
What should you look for in a data exchange platform?
Your data exchange platform needs to be:
- Objectives-Driven: Your data-sharing agreements and business teams should drive everything, including objectives and deliverables. You should be able to define repeatable processes and use shared infrastructure to accelerate contract delivery and thus meet your goals sooner. Business, IT, and security teams should be able to collaborate efficiently.
- Complete: A data exchange platform must extend beyond simple transfer and receive via FTP and APIs. It should automate the entire exchange process from negotiation through renewal, with embedded governance and control at every step. And to minimize disruption, it should easily integrate with your existing data exchange sources and tools.
- Secure: Securing your proprietary data is paramount when sharing data across enterprises. Your data exchange platform must support the latest authentication, authorization, encryption, privacy, and consent controls. And to achieve your contracted service level agreements, it must run reliably and scale appropriately.
But why should anyone care?
In our next blog, we will explain the business benefits of a data exchange platform and who within your organization stands to gain from your data exchange implementation
