Today, data is the key resour­ce. Collec­ting data about users (e.g., search que­ries) or crea­ted by users (e.g., pho­tos or messa­ges) is cru­ci­al to many of the most suc­cess­ful busi­nes­ses of our time. As a result, for many com­pa­nies, it is vital to keep this resour­ce clo­sed. Howe­ver, in other are­as, a push towards ope­ning data is seen, e.g., in the smart cities domain. Here, plat­forms are nee­ded that make sharing data most effi­ci­ent. In other domains, e.g., indus­tri­al manu­fac­tu­ring, data is still tight­ly locked. Howe­ver, a trend shows that indus­tri­al data shall be sha­red with spe­ci­fic third par­ties, e.g., for spe­cia­li­zed ana­ly­tics. In both cases, enab­ling the mone­tiza­ti­on of using or pro­ces­sing of data is cru­ci­al for new busi­ness models. Data mar­ket­pla­ces are nee­ded to enab­le the­se func­tio­n­a­li­ties. The­se data mar­ket­pla­ces need to be capa­ble of enab­ling this in a trusted and secu­re man­ner whe­re all the peers can equal­ly con­tri­bu­te and every sin­gle step is audita­ble. New tech­no­lo­gies, such as dis­tri­bu­t­ed led­gers (e.g., Block­chain), can be used to enab­le such trusted data mar­ket­pla­ces.

Besi­des the abi­li­ty of mone­tiza­ti­on, data mar­ket­pla­ces also need to hand­le the hete­ro­gen­ei­ty of data and faci­li­ta­te to invol­ve sta­ke­hol­ders to effi­ci­ent­ly dis­co­ver, exchan­ge and final­ly inte­gra­te data into their app­li­ca­ti­ons and pro­duc­ts. Com­mon voca­bu­la­ries and seman­tic data models are important fea­tures of data mar­ket­pla­ces in order to bridge the inter­ope­ra­bi­li­ty gap and auto­ma­te data inte­gra­ti­on at sca­le.