We are investing a lot of time profiling valuable data sources as part of the Streamdata.io API Gallery and providing real-time data streams to our customers. There is an insatiable appetite for data right now, and we have customers competing over who gets first access to some of the more interesting data sources we are finding right now. Our biggest challenge isn’t finding data sources or finding customers who are interested in purchasing access to them, it is ensuring that data is available as simple JSON web APIs so that we can easily define, connect, and stream data where it is needed.
As part of our work, we are increasingly coming across companies who have interesting data sets but don’t have them exposed as web APIs. This increases the obstacle to us being able to assess the data source and be able to deliver it efficiently, which means many of our customers are not going to be interested in buying into it. There are just too many sources of data out there right now, and data buyers know that they can be pretty picky when it comes to the quality of data, as well as the overall access and availability. If it isn’t available in a common data format, and accessible via the web through a simple API, it significantly diminishes the data’s value on the overall market.
The bar for developing and publishing simple web APIs from existing databases has been lowered significantly in the last couple of years, with the availability of cloud-based solutions from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. It is pretty straightforward to migrate an existing database to the cloud, and automatically provision an API from the database using one of the API gateway and management solutions offered by these providers. Making API access to common database resources a commodity and something that is inexpensive to do, and can be done at scale–even allowing you to deploy geographically specific API resources exactly where you need them. Allowing data owners and stewards to manage access to their data, rate limit, and even charge for access to valuable resources using simple, web-based APIs.
We can’t emphasize the importance of having your valuable data resources available as simple web APIs into today’s digital business environment. We have customers who are developing entirely new revenue streams off of existing databases they didn’t even see as being that valuable. Taking old sales receipts, sensor data, environmental data, and much more, then exposing them via APIs, and giving these data stores new life. While we do work with real-time, streaming data sources most of the time, historical data is often even more valuable than real-time sources. We are happy to profile and provide access to any types of valuable resources, adding them to the stack of resources we showcase to our growing clientele of data buyers. So, we just wanted to make sure an ask you if all of your valuable data is available as APIs? If not, we’d like to help. If yes, then reach out, and we are happy to profile and showcase as part of our growing data catalog.
