In 2016, a big trend was do-it-yourself IT, and it was truly a breakthrough year for self-service data preparation and analytics. Adoption of self-service analytics solutions skyrocketed, because business users demand the ability to analyze data without having to rely on IT. Self-service data preparation tools also experienced rapid growth, as more data users realize the technology can save them tremendous time, budget and resources by finding and accessing data from virtually any source rapidly and then preparing it for analysis in a fraction of the time that it takes using spreadsheets and other manually intensive measures. This trend will continue to expand going into 2017 and, in fact, tremendous opportunity lies ahead. We’ll continue to see just as many—if not more—innovations that will persist in transforming how data scientists, data analysts and business users harness insights to deliver corporate value and improve operational processes. In this eWEEK slide show, using industry information compiled by Jon Pilkington, chief products officer at Datawatch, we offer 12 self-service data preparation and analytics predictions.
