To address this, Nasdaq standardized on Databricks technologies, including Delta Lake, Unity Catalog and Databricks’ broader lakehouse architecture. The goal was not simply to centralize data but to create a common platform that could be shared across business units while maintaining appropriate controls and governance.
“We really have to have Databricks,” Ruan said, describing the company's effort to move toward a common catalog, governance framework and control structure.
Aoki said Nasdaq recently completed a two-year initiative to bring together data from across the enterprise, including product information, sales data, HR systems, customer relationship management platforms and financial reporting systems.
The result is what executives described as a single source of truth for corporate data. That foundation supports a variety of internal applications, from sales intelligence tools to executive dashboards used by senior leadership.
One example is Beacon, a data platform that provides executives and board members with performance metrics, business unit insights and financial analysis. According to Aoki, Beacon has become a central source of information for Nasdaq's leadership team.
“Our CEO and CFO look at this every single day,” he said.
DISCOVER: Turn data into insights and accelerate artificial intelligence initiatives.
Nasdaq’s Expanding Financial Data Business
The company's Databricks strategy extends well beyond internal analytics.
Ruan highlighted Nasdaq’s index business as an example of the scale and complexity involved in managing financial data. Nasdaq operates more than 10,000 indexes and incorporates data from more than 50 markets worldwide, alongside pricing information, foreign exchange rates and company fundamentals.
Those workloads require highly accurate, reproducible calculations and support both batch and near-real-time processing.
Aoki said Databricks is embedded throughout that environment. Nasdaq uses Lakeflow and Delta Live Tables to manage data ingestion and transformation, Databricks SQL for research and index development, and Unity Catalog to provide governance and visibility across data sets.
The platform has also accelerated product development. Ruan noted that dozens of new indexes were launched on the modernized architecture over the past year, demonstrating how technology investments can directly support business growth.
Beyond operational efficiency, Nasdaq sees value in making data easier to discover, combine and reuse.
“What we're trying to do is make that data more valuable,” Aoki said.
By reducing the cost and complexity of working with data, teams can iterate more quickly and create new products faster, he added.
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