The data-as-a-service business model is simple. DaaS companies provide access to their data to other organizations for a fee. These models can include subscription-based access, pay-per-use, and licensing. DaaS providers may also offer data cleaning, analysis, and visualization services.
Companies pay a subscription-based fee to access data hosted on the cloud. This fee can be based on the amount of data used, the number of users who access the data, or a combination of both.
The subscription covers all the costs associated with the hosting and management of the data, including storage, maintenance, and updates. Companies can access the data they need on demand, without having to purchase and manage any hardware or software. This allows them to access the data they need quickly and cost-effectively, without having to collect it themselves.
The advantage of charging for DaaS on a subscription basis is that having a loyal base of signed-up, paying customers greatly reduces your customer acquisition costs (CAC). For the DaaS company itself, there’s less overhead associated with preparing the data than there is with the two other prominent Big Data business models: Information-as-a-Service and Answers-as-a-Service. So DaaS is fundamentally lean as a business model.
Now that we understand how DaaS works and is sold on a high level, let’s dive deeper into the real information DaaS can provide. As with all external data, data-as-a-service spans 100s of different categories. In Chapter 4, we’ll look at just a few data-as-a-service examples.
