Azure Data Share Seeks to Streamline Big Data Sharing

Microsoft has unveiled its preview for Azure Data Share, a new data service targeted at sharing data across organizations. According to Microsoft, Azure Data Share is targeted at those cases where data is housed with partners or third parties, but sharing the data simply is challenging for users. 

The launch was announced in a blog post by Mike Flasko, Director of Program Management, Information Management & Governance at Microsoft. Flasko said that previous solutions – including file transfer protocol (FTP) and web APIs – often require bespoke development and internal management, fail to meet rigorous security and governance standards for enterprise, and are less suitable for sharing larger datasets.

Azure Data Share integrates with Azure Blob Storage and Azure Data Lake Storage, allowing enterprise users to share big data with external organizations. (And, Flasko promised, “New services will continue to come online.”) Azure Data Share is fully managed – requiring no infrastructure – and allows users to set the service to automatically share new data in selected datasets.

“For example,” Flasko writes, “retailers can leverage Azure Data Share to easily share sales inventory and demographic data for demand forecasting and price optimization with their suppliers.” Flasko also cites Finastra, a leading fintech company. Finastra collaborated with Microsoft to fully integrate Azure Data Share with FusionFabric.cloud, allowing Finastra to “enable seamless distribution of premium datasets to a wider ecosystem of application developers across the FinTech value chain.”

“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,” said Eli Rosner, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Finastra. “Our partnership with Microsoft truly provides us with limitless opportunities to drive transformation in Financial Services.”

To learn more about Azure Data Share, follow this link.

Related Items:

Google Adds Elastifile to Cloud Storage Mix

Argonne Team Makes Record Globus File Transfer

RavenDB Launches Managed Cloud Service