Analytics
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Recently there was a blog from Revolution Analytics regarding the demand for R jobs being on the rise. It not only shows the rise of R jobs, but also the decline of jobs for those with experience in legacy programs like SAS. This is creating a significant change in the Analytics market space, as more and more organizations and vendors alike are starting to adapt to this rise of R programming language.
Organizations are recognizing that more students are coming out of school having knowledge in the R programming language, without learning SAS. This is interesting, as SAS has university programs in place where they are trying to counter this R revolution by basically giving their software away. Whereas R is open-source and is already free and organizations and universities don’t have to necessarily pay for the software, they just have to pay for the resources. So why should organizations continue to spend money to maintain a system that nobody is bothering to learn?
Vendors are adapting to this rise as well. Most vendors know that they can’t adapt to the needs of SAS Programmers, since SAS is a closed system and likes to “keep to themselves.” And rather than be like SAS, where you have to know how to write SAS code to really get the most out of the product, vendors are trying not to pigeon hole themselves into the full requirements of the R programming language. With everything you hear in the market today, it is about making analytics more accessible throughout the business. But how do you do that - because after all, R is still a programming language?
The way we at Alteryx do this, is to make the R language accessible to both the business user and the programmers. We wrap the R scripts into an easy-to-use macro (Figure 1) that can be applied in a simple drag-and-drop workflow environment. The entire coding and scripting is hidden, so that the business user can focus on the analysis they want, rather than write code. At the same time, we still enable R programmers the ability to unlock the scripts and language behind the macro, and make any changes they want. In addition, we provide them the ability to write their own R macros, or bring in their own R scripts if they need to, using the R Tool (Figure 1).
To try Alteryx for yourself, download our Project Edition here.
Matthew Madden
Sr. Product Marketing Manager.
