Microsoft expands open data push

Open Data Initiative
Image Credit: Microsoft (Image credit: Image Credit: Microsoft)

During last year's Ignite conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was joined on stage by the CEOs of Adobe and SAP to announce the launch of the Open Data Initiative.

The aim of the initiative was to simplify the process of moving data between each company's service by agreeing to a standard data format that would allow customers to move their data out of silos and into a single data lake.

At this year's Adobe Summit, the tree companies took the stage again to announce their plans to expand the program as they look to add new partners.

Microsoft's corporate vice president Alysa Taylor explained the motivation to the initiative to TechCrunch, saying:

“The intent of the companies joining forces was really to solve a common customer problem that we hear time and time again, which is that there are high-value business data tends to be very siloed in a variety of different applications. Being able to extract that data, reason over that data, garner intelligence from that data, is very cost-prohibitive and it’s very manual and time-consuming.” 

New partners

Microsoft, Adobe and SAP highlighted the fact that the Open Data Initiative is open to other partners as they announced the formation of a partner advisory council.

The new council's first partners include Accenture, Amadeus, Capgemini, Change Healthcare, Cognizant, EY, Finastra, Genesys, Hootsuite, Inmobi, Sprinklr and WPP.

This is just the beginning though as the group plans to expand beyond this first set of partners to one day include a much larger group of shareholders.

The Open Data Initiative is a collaborative effort by the engineering, sales and product marketing groups of Microsoft, Adobe, SAP and its partners.

Via TechCrunch

Anthony Spadafora

After working with the TechRadar Pro team for the last several years, Anthony is now the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. When not writing, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home.