In this contributed article, Jerod Johnson, senior technology evangelist at CData Software, discusses how organizations can empower citizen data analysts to help reduce the workload of IT. IT departments have a lot on their shoulders already with a backlog of planned IT projects going back anywhere from three months to one year. And with data and cloud spending to surpass $1.3 trillion by 2025, real-time data connectivity provides universal data access and integrations, relieving pressure from IT teams while speeding up processes and improving operations on the business side.