Why Gartner believes data marketplaces are essential for delivering AI-ready data

Every Chief Data Officer (CDO) is looking to transform their organization’s data into real business impact. Achieving this objective requires sharing high-quality, reliable data seamlessly with both business teams and AI. 

However, often this “last mile” data consumption layer is still not in place within many organizations. The result? Data remains trapped in technical tools and silos, and can only be accessed by experts, holding back sharing and hampering AI adoption. 

Data marketplaces overcome this challenge by sharing data through an intuitive, e-commerce style interface that builds trust and makes it easy for everyone to securely discover, access and consume data. In a new report, Gartner outlines the growing importance of data marketplaces, and explains the key areas to focus on to successfully deploy them. This blog provides an overview of the report, introducing the data marketplace concept and its impact on data usage.

To become data-driven, organizations need to ensure that their data is available seamlessly at scale across the business. It cannot be solely accessible or understandable by technical teams, but must be incorporated into every employee’s working life. 

While this need for trustworthy, understandable data is not new, the rise of AI has made access to information critical. Without the right data, AI models and agents simply will not deliver ROI. At best they will waste money and resources, while at worst they will make incorrect, potentially biased, decisions.

As Gartner analysts Richa Jha, Ehtisham Zaidi, Robert Thanaraj, and Michele Launi explain in a new report Data Marketplaces Are Key to Faster Data Product Adoption and AI-Ready Data Delivery data consumption by humans and AI is being held back by:

• Siloed data that cannot be used across the wider business and requires an expensive technology stack to manage and maintain it
• A lack of high-quality, diverse datasets to enable specific AI use cases to perform effectively
• Growing data privacy and compliance regulations that require access to data to be balanced with security and control

Data marketplaces overcome this challenge, making data securely available to all. They transform data into a core strategic asset, and especially drive the consumption of data products at scale. Gartner considers data marketplaces essential to maximize ROI from investments in data.

A data marketplace is a single, centralized space for securely sharing data across the business or wider ecosystem. It acts as a collaboration space for data, connecting data producers and consumers. Fed by data warehouses, data storage, and business systems, it is built on an intuitive, self-service interface that makes data understandable and trusted by all audiences, both human and AI. By offering a user experience modeled on an e-commerce marketplace, it enables everyone to easily discover, access and consume data in the right format for their needs. Comprehensive metadata, a business glossary and the built-in ability to visualize data all help drive engagement and adoption. Security is guaranteed by powerful, granular access control, and a full audit trail to show lineage.

According to the 2024 Gartner Evolution of Data Management Survey, 26% of organizations have already implemented a data marketplace, with a further 31% planning to prioritize implementation by 2027. 

Data marketplaces are crucial to data sharing, particularly of ready-to-consume, business-focused data products and for making compliant, AI-ready data available to AI models and agents.

Gartner highlights four areas where data marketplaces deliver strategic value for CDOs and other data leaders:

• They accelerate access to data and reduce time to deliver value through self-service
• They democratize data access, making information available across the business 
• They bring together high-quality, diverse datasets to enable effective AI and analytics
• They deliver tangible business impact, such as through greater efficiency and improved AI performance

Use cases for data marketplaces

By making data seamlessly available to all, data marketplaces positively impact the business. Gartner outlines eight potential use cases which deliver ROI:

• Centralized data product catalog: enabling business users to find, access and consume the right data products for their needs
• Self-service data access in support of federated management: democratizing data through self-service access for all, with business domains retaining control of their data assets
• Iterative data product development: a collaborative environment for data producers and consumers, providing usage measurement, communication and feedback to continuously refine and improve data products
• Governed and secure data sharing: enforcing and monitoring governance and compliance, while enabling secure data access 
• Data product valuation and measurement of ROI: understanding usage and the business value delivered by individual data products, showing benefits and guiding future investment
• Accelerated time to value by data democratization: reducing time to market and value by enabling self-service access and data-driven decision-making
• Supporting Al and advanced analytics initiatives: providing access to high-quality, AI-ready datasets for both model training and to underpin agentic AI
• Regulatory compliance and audit readiness: automated and transparent reporting and monitoring, with audit trail for compliance and policy enforcement

As Gartner states, the adoption of data marketplaces is expanding rapidly. However, it is vital that organizations select the right technology for their specific needs, and build the right culture and frameworks to ensure success:

Buy, don’t build

It can be tempting for CDOs and IT teams to build their own data marketplace from scratch, rather than buying from a SaaS vendor. This in-house approach is likely to add to costs, lengthen timescales and reduce effectiveness. While building data marketplaces may appear simple from the outside, they are complex to create in practice, requiring a range of skills and capabilities to create and operate effectively over time. Partnering with a best-of-breed vendor who has long-term experience and a customizable platform accelerates deployments and time to value. 

Huwise has over 15 years of experience in the market, supporting the creation of over 3,000 data marketplaces in 25 countries. Gartner lists the company as a representative stand-alone data marketplace vendor in its research.

Pick the best capabilities for your needs

As an emerging technology, not every data marketplace platform vendor offers the same breadth and depth of features. Look for a solution that:

• is built to deliver and maintain data products alongside other data assets, 
• harnesses AI to aid discovery for users,
• is easy to personalize and administer, 
• connects to all common data sources, and can scale to meet the largest data volumes. 
• support robust data governance and ensure compliance through granular access management and full auditable data lineage features. 
• enable direct access to data, rather than simply providing a catalog, with data either stored in the data marketplace or available through zero-copy features. 

Ensure the organization is ready for data sharing

Sharing data, especially data products, across the organization requires a shift in culture from business, IT, and data teams:

• Business departments have to break down silos and willingly share their data to help achieve overall organizational objectives
• Data teams have to adopt a product mindset that moves from meeting one-off requests for information to building, maintaining, and improving a pipeline of data products in conjunction with the business
• IT teams have to ensure that the right data and compliance foundations are in place in order to populate the data marketplace with high-quality, reliable and secure data
• Users have to overcome any fears or concerns about using data, with training helping to create a data-driven, open culture

Successfully deploying a data marketplace requires collaboration across the business. Different groups from the business, data and IT departments need to work together, often in hybrid teams to unlock ongoing value from data. There must be a laser focus on what stakeholders, should as data consumers, want and expect from data products and the wider marketplace in order to engage them and drive usage.

Align with business objectives

As with any large-scale initiative, data marketplaces need to have clear aims and metrics to measure their impact. They must align with wider business objectives, especially around AI, in order to demonstrate their value to the organization. It is vital to get buy-in from senior management and other stakeholders, and ensure the project is viewed as a business enabler, rather than simply a technical IT infrastructure project.

Gartner’s latest analysis on data marketplaces highlights the growing adoption of these powerful, intuitive sharing, consumption platforms. By providing seamless human and AI access to trusted data through an understandable, secure solution, organizations can maximize value from their data, scale AI success and drive data democratization across the business. 

To showcase the business impact of its data product marketplace technology, Huwise will be exhibiting and speaking at the forthcoming Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in London between 11-13 May. Find out more about how we can help transform your data strategy by visiting us on booth 113 or booking a meeting here.