AWS Data Exchange vs. Phocas Business Intelligence

AWS Data Exchange fits best for scenarios where you have datasets that you would like to sell and you want to deliver it to anyone who would like to purchase it. It really beats having to set up downloads via your own website or portal. However, it can get complicated to manage if you're trying to deliver a dataset a client has already paid for.

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If you would like your data in one place with easy access, this is the software for you. You can have data from multiple systems and bring it into one view so that you have a quick and easily visible dashboard for the data you wish to see.

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• Simplified data delivery
• Ability to create any amount of data products
• Ability to integrate payment plans with data products
• Tracking data downloads and users
• Integration with other AWS data services

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• Custom reports are simple to create.
• The ability to manage users and their dashboards is solid.
• Easy to navigate web interface makes the software accessible from anywhere.

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• Integration with more data sources
• Ability to deliver data to clients without AWS accounts
• Inclusion of direct data downloads in addition to asynchronous methods

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• Phocas needs to make it easier to connect to different types of databases.
• The data in Phocas needs to be updated faster in some cases.
• It needs to provide functions to create better charts and graphs.

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There have been a lot of problems with ADX. First, the entire system is incredibly clunky from beginning to end.First, by AWS's own admission they're missing a lot of "tablestakes functionality" like the ability to see who is coming to your pages, more flexibility to edit and update your listings, the ability to create a storefront or catalog that actually tries to sell your products. All-in-all you're flying completely blind with AWS. In our convos with other sellers we strongly believe very little organic traffic is flowing through the AWS exchange. For the headache, it's not worth the time or the effort. It's very difficult to market or sell your products.We've also had a number of simple UX bugs where they just don't accurately reflect the attributes of your product. For instance for an S3 bucket they had "+metered costs" displayed to one of our buyers in the price. This of course caused a lot of confusion. They also misrepresented the historical revisions that were available in our product sets because of another UX bug. It's difficult to know what other things in the UX are also broken and incongruent.We also did have a purchase, but the seller is completely at their whim at providing you fake emails, fake company names, fake use cases because AWS hasn't thought through simple workflows like "why even have subscription confirmation if I can fake literally everything about a subscription request." So as a result we're now in an endless, timewasting, unhelpful thread with AWS support trying to get payment. They're confused of what to do and we feel completely lost.Lastly, the AWS team has been abysmal in addressing our concerns. Conversations with them result in a laundry list of excuses of why simple functionalities are so hard (including just having accurate documentation). It was a very frustrating and unproductive call. Our objective of our call was to help us see that ADX is a well-resourced and well-visioned product. Ultimately they couldn't clearly articulate who they built the exchange for both on the seller side and the buyer side.Don't waste your time. This is at best a very foggy experiment. Look at other sellers, they have a lot of free pages to try to get attention, but then have smart tactics to divert transactions away from the ADX. Ultimately, smart move. Why give 8-10% of your cut to a product that is basically bare-bones infrastructure.

It is a very user-friendly product and is easy to understand. You can get your data from just a quick click and the dashboard loads. You can take the data and drill down easy to find what you are looking for.

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Support is responsive. You log a call and they will respond quickly and resolve your issues. We have only had great experiences with the support team.

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Phocas is easy to use for end users and can be used on desktops, laptops, and phones.

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• Reduced time to publish datasets for sale by more than 80%
• Increased net profit from dataset sales by ~10%
• Reduced data delivery time to clients by 15%

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• It has given our business a view on data
• We can access it from anywhere
• You can have multiple dashboards for different information

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