Soda today announced the launch of Soda Cloud, a data observability and collaboration platform that helps data teams get ahead of the silent data issues affecting organizations every day. Soda Cloud provides both the tools to detect and resolve data issues and a collaboration platform to define what good data looks like across every part of an organisation.
Acceleration towards automation is taking place across the enterprise with data products being built using ever-increasing volumes of data from different sources. These data products - essentially software that uses data to drive outcomes such as automated price-setting for cars and hotels rooms, or e-commerce recommendation engines - are transforming the way every business operates, but once in production they need to be managed on an ongoing basis. The challenge is that as data products are fed from an increasing number of sources, inevitable changes to data schemas and structures, broken transformation logic and concept drift impacts the trust in an organization’s own data.
Soda Cloud removes the fear of not knowing and the pain of finding out too late that a silent data issue has had a downstream impact. For organizations reliant on quality data to drive innovation, maximize revenue opportunities and make timely decisions, Soda Cloud creates complete transparency by connecting to any data source, automatically alerting the right people at the right time when data issues arise.
“The biggest problem faced by data teams today is that they are flying blind without the capabilities to detect problems with their data. The result is that data issues remain silent and undetected,” explained Tom Baeyens, CTO, Soda. “Without a clear strategy to monitor data for issues, most organizations do not know how to start addressing the problem which leaves their systems exposed and can result in serious downstream issues for the data products they are building. Soda gives those responsible for data quality and integrity the capability to create a culture and community of good data practices that starts at the sources of data and flows through an organization. This is what Soda and our new Soda Cloud are all about: giving data teams the power to create trusted data products, and an integrated platform to bring everyone closer to data.”
Soda Cloud, End-to-End Data Observability for Modern Data Teams
Soda Cloud is an integrated platform that helps modern data teams uncover data issues and alert the right people at the right time to identify the root causes that are impeding data quality. By bringing everyone closer to data and creating complete transparency, Soda Cloud provides the end-to-end observability and control that data teams need to define what good data should look like.
Martijn Spaan, Head of Data and Oversight at NN Investment Partners (NN IP), a Dutch investment firm with over $300bn assets under management and an early Soda adopter, said, “Accessibility to trusted data from different sources keeps us ahead of the game offering future-proof financial investment services to our clients. If you cannot trust the data at your fingertips, it is next to useless. For a data-driven organisation like NN IP, the offering from Soda aligns with our data strategy. It provides transparency and confidence about the data for our investment professionals and for our clients. This is imperative for efficient business operations and supports excellent customer service.”
Soda Cloud prescriptively solves the problem of discovering the silent data issues that matter, firstly by giving data teams a central platform to track and score the health of data across core quality dimensions, and then by equipping data and analytics engineers with a simple way to test data each and every time it is transformed to ensure data pipelines are more reliable. Via YAML-based OSS developer tools like Soda SQL, data and analytics engineers can easily stop data production and quarantine bad data. Soda Cloud visualizes the health of datasets and acts as a communication hub for data issues.
Using Soda Cloud, data consumers and producers can easily align on what’s important, what’s expected, and what to measure so that data remains fit for purpose. Integration with communication channels such as email and Slack enables the right people to be alerted at the right time to diagnose, prioritize and resolve silent data issues before they have downstream impact.
“We believe that data quality is a team sport. Everyone who has a stake in data - and that is now everyone in the business - needs to understand it, trust it, and stay on top of it. We know this first hand because we have been part of the data teams working late into the night to identify and resolve data issues. We understand the fear of not knowing, and the pain of putting things right,” said Maarten Masschelein, CEO, Soda. “For any team to function successfully, collaboration is key. Collaboration is at the heart of transparency, but when it comes to data, silos get in the way. Soda Cloud is a natural milestone for Soda as we seek to solve the problems that we ourselves have acutely experienced: it provides an integrated and collaborative platform that gives modern data teams what they need to create trust in the data.”
Soda recently raised $17M funding to develop its offering and accelerate growth. Its Series A round was led by Singular, with participation from prior seed investors Point Nine Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, the US-based Data Community Fund and a number of angel investors. Soda Cloud is available, with access to a suite of OSS developer tools.
