Originally reported by martechcube.com. Original announcement date: December 2019.
What Was Announced
Acxiom, the data and technology company behind many enterprise marketing platforms, announced its selection as a Launch Partner for AWS Data Exchange — an Amazon Web Services (AWS) service designed to make it straightforward for AWS customers to find, subscribe to, and consume third-party data directly within the cloud.
Through the integration, AWS customers gain access to Acxiom’s aggregated marketing analytics datasets spanning regions across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas — all accessible from within the AWS environment rather than through disparate external systems.
What Is AWS Data Exchange?
AWS Data Exchange is an AWS marketplace service that allows organizations to discover, license, and ingest third-party datasets directly into their AWS workloads. It removes the friction typically associated with sourcing external data — eliminating manual downloads, custom integrations, and fragmented data pipelines — by giving subscribers a unified mechanism to access curated data products.
The service is particularly relevant for teams running analytics, machine-learning models, and data-driven applications on AWS, as it allows external datasets to be imported directly into services like Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, or Amazon SageMaker without leaving the AWS ecosystem.
The Problem It Solves for Acxiom Customers
Before AWS Data Exchange, data consumers working with multiple providers — including Acxiom — had to retrieve data from numerous SFTP endpoints and manually consolidate those assets before any meaningful analysis could begin. This workflow created operational overhead that slowed time-to-insight and increased the risk of data handling errors.
Amanda Terry, Vice President of Publisher and Platform Partnerships at Acxiom, explained the impact at the time of the announcement:
“Before AWS Data Exchange, clients would have to go to multiple SFTP sites to download the information and bring those data assets together in one place. Having the ability to access these insights in one place gives our clients the ability to spend more time on the analysis needed to make good business decisions and create better customer experiences.”
Amanda Terry, VP of Publisher and Platform Partnerships, Acxiom
AWS Perspective: Simplifying Data Integration at Scale
Stephen Orban, General Manager of AWS Data Exchange at the time, framed the service around reducing integration complexity for organizations running diverse analytics workloads:
“We built AWS Data Exchange to offer organizations an easier way to find, subscribe to and integrate diverse data sets into the applications, analytics, and machine-learning models they’re running on AWS. We are delighted to be working with Acxiom to improve the efficiency of our shared customers’ analytics efforts.”
Stephen Orban, General Manager, AWS Data Exchange
Acxiom’s Data and Privacy Commitments
David Skinner, Managing Director of Channels and Alliances at Acxiom, emphasized that the datasets made available through AWS Data Exchange are ethically sourced and privacy-compliant. The announcement also pointed toward future expansions, including marketing analytics capabilities, data monetization services, and additional custom datasets to be added to the exchange.
“Acxiom is excited to make a selection of our ethically sourced and privacy-compliant data sets available to AWS customers. We also look forward to bringing more of Acxiom’s high-value products and services to AWS customers in the near future, including our marketing analytics capabilities, data monetization services and additional custom data sets.”
David Skinner, Managing Director of Channels and Alliances, Acxiom
Key Takeaways for DevOps and Data Engineering Teams
- Reduced pipeline complexity: Subscribing to data through AWS Data Exchange removes the need to build and maintain custom ingestion pipelines from external SFTP or API sources.
- Tighter cloud-native integration: Data lands directly in AWS storage services, making it immediately available to downstream ETL jobs, ML training pipelines, and BI tools running on AWS.
- Subscription-based access control: AWS Data Exchange provides a managed licensing layer, reducing the operational burden of managing data contracts and access credentials manually.
- Scalability: As data volumes grow or new regions are added, AWS-native tooling handles scaling without requiring re-architecture of the ingestion layer.
Video Overview
For more information on AWS Data Exchange, visit the AWS Data Exchange product page.