Aboitiz drives data innovation with Harbr

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Overview

Aboitiz Data Innovation (ADI) is the data science and artificial intelligence arm of Aboitiz Group, a conglomerate with revenues over $3.9 billion. In May 2022, ADI launched Parlay, a data exchange platform built on Harbr and powered by AWS. Parlay is key to realizing ADI’s vision of transforming data into meaningful outcomes — whether it’s increasing operational efficiency, strengthening risk management, or optimizing business revenue.

Inception

ADI needed the right platform to deliver on their ambition of democratizing data to deliver accelerated impact. With this, ADI, led by its CEO Dr. David R. Hardoon, turned to Harbr. It was immediately clear that Harbr would be the ideal platform to build Parlay on.

Partnership highlights

Parlay enables the Aboitiz Group and its stakeholders to securely publish, share, and collaborate on data across ecosystems. This helps them to achieve four key objectives:

  1. Democratize data to develop high-value data products and innovative solutions.
  2. Create ecosystems to unlock possibilities and forge synergies across industries.
  3. Provide a scalable data science capability to drive commercial outcomes throughout the Aboitiz Group.
  4. Leverage data exchange to commercialize data science services across southeast Asia.

Parlay empowers users to build and operationalize data science and AI models that deliver high-value business outcomes.

The Aboitiz Group has grown into a multi-industry conglomerate that includes companies like UnionBank of the Philippines, Aboitiz InfraCapital, and Aboitiz Power Corporation. The Group directly serves over 100 million people. ADI was established to accelerate data-driven innovation across the Group and the Southeast Asia region.
I want to be able to access data, analyze it, build products and solutions on top of it, and extract insights. At the same time, I want this to happen in a zero trust environment where data belongs to the custodian or owner in perpetuity.
Dr. David R. Hardoon
Chief Executive Officer, Aboitiz Data Innovation

Collaboration at the core

Given the diversity of use cases and organizations involved, it was crucial for Parlay to fulfill two key requirements:

  • Secure exchange and collaboration across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries
  • Interoperability with the major cloud providers and data science technologies

Central to Parlay, like any Harbr platform, is secure data exchange and collaboration.
This is enabled through secure sandboxes called Spaces, which broker access between data producers and consumers. Spaces accelerate time to value by providing users with a few key benefits:

  • Rapidly and safely evaluate data products for specific use cases with industry-leading tools.
  • Bring in their own or third-party data to join, augment or compare it with a data product.
  • Create models and automate execution to create customized data products that remain up to date.

ADI’s wish for collaboration that doesn’t jeopardize data security is fulfilled by these secure sandbox environments.

To me, it’s all about liberalizing access to data — taking it from its raw form and showing the possibilities to go beyond. To succeed in our mission to transform into a techglomerate, our teams need access to data. They need access to insights. Parlay plays a critical role in how we get there.
Dr. David R. Hardoon Chief Executive Officer, Aboitiz Data Innovation
What positioned Harbr as the right partner, is that collaboration is at the heart of the platform. The best way to reach our objectives is for data product managers and end users to work together. Harbr makes this possible thanks to secure data exchange and granular access rights.
Dr. David R. Hardoon Chief Executive Officer, Aboitiz Data Innovation

Immediate impact

Through Parlay, businesses and their stakeholders can easily and securely share and access valuable data to build high-value data products and solutions to ensure financial inclusion, environmental sustainability, clean and efficient utilities, and overall better services.

UnionBank streamlines processes with Parlay

At UnionBank of the Philippines, which manages over $15 billion in assets, Parlay enables seamless access to sensitive data. As a result, data modelling has accelerated and collaboration on analytics has become a regular activity.

Looking to the future

Parlay is vital to the Aboitiz Group’s ambitious plans in an increasingly digital world. Parlay helps ensure that all key players across the Group and the wider region have a secure platform that enables them to develop and deploy data science and AI solutions at scale.

ADI truly understands the importance of securely sharing data across organizational boundaries. If you’re inspired by ADI’s embrace of a datadriven future, get in touch.
Anthony Cosgrove, Chief Strategy Officer, Harbr