How the Democratization of Data Should Actually Work

Brad Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

• Thanks in part to the cloud and pervasive mobility, vendors are looking to democratize data, putting advanced business intelligence tools into as many hands as possible.
•  Placing advanced analytics tools into the hands of the average business not only highlights the importance of data expertise, but may also drive interest in what was a narrow field of endeavor.

This week, Microsoft announced plans for eventually rolling out an advanced analytics service called Azure Machine Learning. The aim of this service is to make predictive analytics accessible to a broad range of companies, not merely those equipped with an army of data scientists and a commensurately large software budget to match. That’s a pretty tall order and at first blush maybe not even be a good idea.