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A group of data and analytics providers led by Google Cloud launched the Data Cloud Alliance to solve the challenges of modern digital transformation. The alliance aims to remove data restrictions and ensure access to data from storage, analytics, and database providers.
The Data Cloud Alliance is a new initiative aiming to ensure global enterprises have more seamless access to and insights into the data required for digital transformation. As founding members of the Data Cloud Alliance, Google Cloud, Accenture, Confluent, Databricks, Dataiku, Deloitte, Elastic, Fivetran, MongoDB, Neo4j, Redis, and Starburst are committed to making data more portable and accessible across disparate business systems, platforms, and environments—intending to ensure that access to data is never a barrier to digital transformation.
Enterprises are under increasing pressure to digitally transform to reach customers in new ways, open up entirely new digital business areas, and meet increasingly complex governance and compliance requirements. Data is essential for digital transformation. Every consumer interaction — searches, eCommerce transactions, online comments, clicks, reviews, and more — generates more data every minute. The proliferation of data and the many software and cloud-based applications used to analyze and manage it means that organizations increasingly need common digital data standards and a commitment to open data to use data for digital transformation effectively.
The Data Cloud Alliance aims to accelerate the adoption of data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning best practices across industries through shared data models, open standards, and integrated processes. Alliance members will work together to reduce customer challenges and complexities related to data governance, privacy, data loss prevention, and global compliance. To improve customers’ data clouds, the alliance will commit to filling skill gaps by developing expertise in current data and analytics technologies.
Data Cloud Alliance members will provide infrastructure, APIs, and integration support to ensure data portability and accessibility between different platforms and products in different environments – whether on-premises, public or private cloud, or hybrid. Each Alliance member will collaborate on new, industry-standard data models, processes, and platform integrations to increase data portability and reduce the complexity associated with data governance and global compliance.
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“Data is the common foundation for all digital transformations,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, VP and GM of Databases, Data Analytics, and Business Intelligence at Google Cloud. “By championing open data standards, access and integration between the most popular data platforms and applications, we believe we can significantly accelerate business transformations and bridge the gap between data and value creation.”
“Our customers win when we are the catalyst that enables smoother technological pathways for greater collaboration and industry growth. With the Data Cloud Alliance, we are joining forces with our ecosystem partners to focus on open standards for data exchange across the cloud continuum. It’s about creating an open gate for all partners to unlock more value for our clients together with us and accelerate their post-pandemic digital transformation,” said Lan Guan, Accenture Cloud First Data & AI Lead.
“As organizations accelerate their journey to the cloud and modernize their data stacks, they must be equipped with the necessary capabilities, freedom of technology choice, and data portability to ensure their data analytics strategies are future-proof,” said Chad Verbowski, SVP of Engineering at Confluent. “We are excited to join the Data Cloud Alliance to bring our expertise in data streaming and help ensure that access to data is never a barrier to innovation.”
“Databricks is excited to partner with Google Cloud to promote data sharing based on open standards like Delta Lake. The Data Cloud Alliance underscores our commitment to open data sharing and the Open Data Lakehouse paradigm, enabling data teams to collaborate more effectively,” said David Meyer, SVP of Products, Databricks.
“We are proud to be a member of the new Data Cloud Alliance, supporting our mission to make AI part of a company’s daily work. This initiative will enable more companies to scale their AI projects and achieve exceptional results seamlessly,” said David Tharp, SVP of Ecosystems and Alliances at Dataiku.
We are excited to partner with Google Cloud and the members of this Data Cloud Alliance on industry-standard data models, processes, and platform integrations to improve data portability for our customers who choose Google Cloud products for their digital transformation,” said Francisco Barroso, Principal, US Analytics & Cognitive Offering Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
“Successful digital transformation requires data to be accessible across systems, platforms, and environments,” said Shay Banon, Elastic’s founder, and CTO. “We’re proud to partner with Google Cloud and members of the Data Cloud Alliance to help customers build a strong data foundation through open data access, sharing, and integration.”
“Fivetran is proud to pledge its support to the Data Cloud Alliance. As the gap between data and value continues to widen, no single technology or service can meet this challenge alone. We recognize our obligation as a data cloud leader to accelerate and automate the first leg of analytics – data integration, primarily from SaaS and database sources – so organizations can get rich insights to make data-driven decisions much faster, said Mark Van de Wiel, Field CTO at Fivetran.
“We’re excited to work with Google Cloud and this Data Cloud Alliance members to unify access to data across clouds and application environments, thereby removing barriers to digital transformation,” said Mark Porter, chief technology officer at MongoDB. “Legacy frameworks have made working with data difficult for too many companies. There couldn’t be a more timely and important data initiative to build faster and smarter data-driven applications for customers.”
“Neo4j is committed to open standards, best practices, and skill development to break down productivity and interoperability barriers. We are proud to partner with Google Cloud and other founding members of the Data Cloud Alliance in developing best practices and standards for the modern data stack,” said Philip Rathle, SVP Products at Neo4j.
“Redis is excited to partner with Google Cloud and members of the Data Cloud Alliance to explore how data and artificial intelligence can help solve the evolving challenges of modern applications and unleash the next wave of innovation and customer success,” said Yiftach Shoolman, CTO and co-founder of Redis.
“We believe that every company should have the right to access their data quickly and without barriers and expensive penalties. Starburst is proud to be a founding member of the Data Cloud Alliance and remains committed to rapidly freeing access to data so businesses can be truly data-driven and accelerate their digital transformation,” said Justin Borgman, Starburst co-founder CEO.
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