Bloomberg Hosts New Virtual Data Room for Trialing Data Using AWS

Bloomberg provides high-quality data that drives idea generation, enterprise-wide collaboration, and efficient trading and investment workflows across global capital markets. “Customers use our data to address a vast array of business needs,” says Brian Doherty, global head of Data License at Bloomberg. “We provide a lot of content, and we’re constantly seeing new use cases for that content. Every day, we publish over 100 billion data points spanning company data, sustainability data, pricing, reference, investment research, regulatory data, and more.”

Bloomberg’s VDR was designed to help clients quickly discover which of this content perfectly fits their use cases. Hosted on AWS, the solution accelerates the evaluation cycle without compromising data protection. Using Python-based Jupyter notebooks, Bloomberg’s VDR empowers customers to interact with actual production data while reviewing schemas, coverage, completeness, metadata, and other properties of Bloomberg’s bulk datasets. In addition to common Python libraries, clients can edit the notebooks to answer specific questions such as how they can load the data or how easy it is to use a dataset for their specific use cases.

Bloomberg’s VDR facilitates interaction with Bloomberg’s comprehensive catalog of data and historical data without the need to install software, download files, or onboard files. Firms get immediate access to structured data in an environment that they are comfortable working in. With minimal effort, they can gain the insights they need to be confident in their data purchasing decisions—and ultimately get to production quickly. They can evaluate this data in days instead of months.

“Using AWS services, we can provide our customers with the ability to explore the data they need in the environment they want with minimal friction and high levels of security and availability,” says Doherty.

Bloomberg used Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser—a fully managed, remote enterprise browser—to provide customers with a protected, self-service environment where they can securely access and explore datasets in Bloomberg’s VDR. The VDR is readily available for customers by accessing their Data License content at data.bloomberg.com or by entering {DATA <GO>} on the Bloomberg Terminal. After logging in to the intuitive online data catalog, customers can begin testing Bloomberg’s bulk datasets.

“Using WorkSpaces Secure Browser for our newly launched VDR, we don’t need to get the data to the customer. They can come get it themselves,” says Doherty. “The data stays in the hosted environment, and the customer can come in and interact with it. It’s a very streamlined process.”

The VDR engine is built on a combination of AWS services, which work together to provide a seamless self-service experience. For example, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service, is used to store enterprise datasets. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)—which offers broad and deep compute infrastructure—provides the compute power necessary to run the hosted Python environment. WorkSpaces Secure Browser acts as the secure access point for customers, so data remains protected within Bloomberg’s environment under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model. Users can access WorkSpaces Secure Browser from their existing devices, without having to download or install any client software or use VPN connections.

“We wanted a solution that did not require the customer to install anything to avoid major security and compliance challenges,” says Doherty. “WorkSpaces Secure Browser is fully hosted and secured on AWS, and the systems are clearly separated and delineated. These were key factors in our decisions to host the VDR on AWS.”

The successful launch of the VDR has helped clients tangibly test out and ascertain how Bloomberg’s bulk datasets offer differentiated quality. Now, they can save significant time when discovering and actioning the Bloomberg data they need to streamline operations and discover new investment opportunities.

“More customers are moving forward with their purchases drawing on the experience that they had in the VDR,” says Doherty. “We’ve been very happy with the performance so far, and we’re excited to add more capabilities in the future.”