Instead of trying to say what flatness in analytic geometry means I'll give you some street-fighting tricks for recognizing whether a morphism of analytic spaces ( not necessarily reduced) $f:X\to Y $ is , or has a chance to be, flat. a) A flat map is always open.For example the embedding $\lbrace 0\rbrace \hookrightarrow \mathbb C$ is not flat. b) An open map need not be flat: think of the map from the double point $Spec(\mathbb C[\epsilon ]/(\epsilon^2))\to Spec(\mathbb C)$ from the double point to the reduced point single point. c) Given the morphism $f:X\to Y $ , consider the following property: $\forall x \in X, \quad dim_x(X)=dim_{f(x)} (Y) +dim_x(f^{-1}(f(x)))$ $\quad (DIM) $ We then have: $ f \; \text {flat} \Rightarrow f \;\text { satisfies } (DIM)$ For example a (non-trivial) blowup is *not* flat. d) For a morphism $f:X\to Y $ between connected holomorphic *manifolds* we have: $$f \text { is flat} \iff f \text { is open} \quad \iff (DIM) \;\text {holds}$$ For example a submersion is flat, since it is open. e) Given two complex spaces $X,Y$ the projection $X\times Y\to X$ is flat ( Not trivial: recall that open doesn't imply flat!). f) flatness is preserved by base change. g) The normalization $f:X^{nor} \to X $ of a non-normal space is never flat. For example if $X\subset \mathbb C^2$ is the cusp $y^2=x^3$, the normalization morphism $\mathbb C\to X: t\mapsto (t^2,t^3)$ is not flat.