The regular business owner has access to volumes more data than in years past. There is no longer a need to compress data, to save space, to work from aggregates. The value of this data comes when the business owner applies analytics.

Watson Analytics supports the notion of the “citizen data scientist,” bringing complex data analysis to the average businessperson.

Using analytics to form an opinion

“It’s you, me and everyone,” Marcus Hearne, worldwide marketing leader for Watson Analytics, told theCUBE during IBM Vision 2015. “We have the ability to use analytics to form an opinion rather than just hear things, discus things, look at aggregates. We can use analytics to explore data, to find out predictors of outcomes, to find out true causes, and drill into it in a way that makes sense to us.”

IBM offers a free version of Watson Analytics, a Cloud-based application with sophisticated features that differ only slightly from a premium version, which offers additional storage and direct connections to enterprise repositories. The free trial, or “freemium,” is a change in practice for IBM.

“IBM wanted to really capitalize on analytics and move forward with its customers,” said Hearne. “This isn’t really about creating revenue; this is about creating an ecosystem in which we raise everyone’s analytics ability, understanding and appreciation of what it can do. We want to show our user population how to really fire up their organizations.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Vision 2015.