Data is the driving asset behind the digital era. That’s great for businesses that create masses of data during their normal operations. But who would you turn to if you needed a source for trustworthy data for sale?

The answer is a new solution from Amazon Web Services Inc., according to David McCann (pictured), vice president of AWS migration, marketplace, and control services.

“[It’s] a new service that we call AWS Data Exchange. Instead of allowing you to point, click, subscribe to software … you can go buy research data or you can buy healthcare data … news data … consumer data,” said David McCann (pictured), vice president of AWS migration, marketplace, and control services at Amazon Web Services Inc.

McCann spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. They discussed major new developments in the AWS Marketplace. (* Disclosure below.)

A whole new class of intellectual property

With 14,000 products available globally and “literally dozens” added every day, the AWS Marketplace is changing the procurement and the consumption of software and solutions. Adding data is a “whole new class of intellectual property,” McCann said.

Accessing the data is via a “really easy API,” according to McCann. “The cool thing is that after you subscribe, you copy it right into your S3 bucket, [and it] moves into your virtual private cloud. Then you move it into your project and you can actually create a Lambda function where the next version of the data … just gets updated.”

Another major development in the Marketplace is the ability for independent service vendors to create private offers and bypass the hassle of sales by automating the negotiation process. While private offers were previously available, it was by invite only. Now any vendor can send an automated price quote to a buyer.

“When they now go into Marketplace, there’s a new button in the seller portal. And it says Create Private Offer. And any of our ISVs can now create a private offer,” McCann stated. “This is allowing our sellers to do quotations in the hundreds of thousands, the millions, and sometimes in the tens of millions, on a contract right through Marketplace.”

The AWS Marketplace is seven years old, but in terms of potential it is just starting its growth, according to McCann.

“Global software is $450 billion, growing at 8%. Data is $150 billion, growing at 3%. You’ve got a $600-billion-dollar industry. Marketplace has not touched a tiny percentage,” he said. “We want all of our customers to be able to find, discover, provision and run all of their software and their data out of Marketplace. And it’s going to take us another 10 years.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. And find theCUBE’s video cloud service offering on the AWS Marketplace at CUBE365. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE