Data as a Service (DaaS) is a relatively new data distribution model, which implies that companies and users do not collect, manage and store the necessary information on their own, but delegate this task to specialized providers. In this article, we will consider the advantages of this model, the existing technical difficulties, and how to solve them using residential or datacenter rotating proxies . Importance of DaaS The easiest way to understand the importance of data and, consequently, the services that provide data to companies, is through numbers. According to statistics, the number of search queries with the addition of the phrase “near me” has increased by 900%. This speaks to the growing demand for personalization among users. To provide a personalized service, it is necessary to take data about users, their preferences, and previous experience somewhere, otherwise, they will remain part of the “gray mass”. But it is not so easy to do so. According to various studies, the list of common problems when using Big Data consists of: lack of knowledge and skills to work with them and structure them (46% of cases), lack of technical capabilities (56%), limited bandwidth of analytics systems that cannot cope with data volumes (38%), lack of understanding of how to apply the data once it is received (25%). DaaS providers allow companies to solve all these problems. They give them ready-made datasets created according to predetermined requirements. Of course, the data is usually tailored for a specific industry, answering specific business questions. Ideally, such datasets are easy enough to interpret and make important business decisions based on this information. It sounds enticing. Companies that know how to work with data and have the appropriate infrastructure help those who need information and make money on it. But not everything is so simple, and the main problem for DaaS services here is that it is not enough just to have an infrastructure for collecting data, you also need to be able to collect correct data. Let's talk about this problem in more detail. The main problem of DaaS How is data collected by DaaS companies? By and large, they just have a powerful infrastructure and scripts for collecting data on the Internet - whether it be sites or search engines. Such scripts are called crawlers or scrapers. For example, if a customer company needs information for search engine optimization of its site, then it may need information about competing sites (what target words they use, what search engines look like for these words, etc.). To collect this data, the scraper bot visits the necessary sites from the list and goes through them, downloading the necessary information. At this stage, it may turn out that the owners of the site, like the search engine, are not happy with the fact that someone is trying to download data. Competitors will certainly try to block the activity of such a bot. Usually, server IP addresses are used for the operation of such scrapers. It is not difficult to calculate and block a bot in such a situation - and there are a large number of anti-bot systems for this. And this is even the best option because it is not uncommon for business owners to try to mislead competitors and “slip” distorted data to their scraper bots. As a result, the dataset collected in this way may contain deliberately incorrect data. It is not difficult to imagine the consequences of making important business decisions based on erroneous information. At best, they will be useless; at worst, the company may suffer huge losses. Solution: residential proxies The main problem of DaaS services can be solved by using residential proxies for data scraping. Unlike server IPs that are provided by hosting providers, which can be easily tracked automatically using a special ASN number, things are not so simple with residential proxies. Residential IPs are issued to homeowners by ISPs. Appropriate marks are placed in all related databases. There are special residential proxy services that allow you to use residential addresses. PrivateProxy.me is just such a service. Requests that aggregator site crawlers send from residential IPs look like they are coming from regular users in a certain region. And no one blocks ordinary visitors - in the case of online stores, these are potential customers. As a result, the use of rotating proxies from PrivateProxy.me allows you to guarantee the quality of the collected data. After all, no one will block scraper requests from residential addresses. What is a residential proxy? A residential proxy is a real IP that an ISP gives out to a user. For sites, such addresses look like ordinary users. If a person allows other people to connect to his computer and use the Internet through it, he creates a proxy server. Residential proxies work like this: a person or company provides an IP that is tied to a physical device, such as a computer. This computer acts as a server. Another user connects to the server and after that becomes the owner of the computer and its IP. Then the real IP of the user is hidden and he uses the Internet on behalf of the computer to which he is connected. Residential proxies have features: Limited time for one address. This is called rotation. Usually, providers limit the access time to one specific IP to 3, 5, or 10 minutes. After that, rotation occurs - the client's address changes to a new one. This is convenient if you analyze a lot of sites and do not want to fall under the filters. The IP address will change automatically and the server will think that it is visited by several different users. Geotargeting. This means that you can choose proxies from any region. For example, if you want to access a site under a German IP, buy a German residential proxy. Final thoughts If you are a DaaS company, we recommend that you purchase a residential proxy for efficient work. PrivateProxy.me is a reliable company that provides various types of proxies for different tasks. The impressive experience of the company allows it to provide customers with quality assistance in choosing the right proxy.
