Intelligent Enterprise Top Blog Posts of 2009

News coverage gives you one version of the truth, but there's nothing like the instant expert analysis blogs can bring to breaking stories. Here are the top-15 posts of the year from the Intelligent Enterprise blogosphere:

1. Serious Design Failure at USAspending.gov It was hailed as ushering in a new era of open government, but Seth Grimes uncovered plenty of data-analysis and data-visualization flaws at USAspending.gov.

2. Microsoft's Big Change on Performance Management (and BI) Cindi Howson was among the first to report on Microsoft's move to dump PerformancePoint Server and move most -- but not all -- of its functionality into the Enterprise Edition of SharePoint.3. Making Sense of Gartner's '09 BI Magic Quadrant I found Gartner's 2009 take on SAP and Microsoft, in particular, to be somewhat perplexing, but days later Microsoft made the move on PerformancePoint mentioned above, so perhaps the analysts saw this coming.

4. Relaunched Recovery.gov Fails Accessibility Standards Seth Grimes finds another site that fails to live up to the hype and the government's own expectations. Go figure.

5. SAP BusinessObjects Changes BI Pricing Cindi Howson scores another scoop on important news to BI software license holders.

6. Free MicroStrategy 9: Can You Believe It? In this economy, everybody loves the sound of "free." Cindi Howson reports.

7. SAP 'Fully Integrates' Business Objects The change from "Business Objects, an SAP Company" to "SAP BusinessObjects" may sound subtle, but as I reported based on an interview with Bill McDermott, this move marked a shift from autonomy to tight integration.

8. MicroStrategy 9 Brings Simplicity and Sophistication to BI Mark Smith finds a lot to like in MicroStrategy's big release of 2009.

9. HP Says It's 'All in' On BI and Neoview A reorg and recommitment early in the year brought reassuring words from HP about its BI plans, but most of what we saw in 2009 was deeper marketing partnerships. If it were really serious about information management software, HP would buy Informatica. And if it were really bold, it would buy Teradata and Microstrategy to boot. Company prices aren't going to get any cheaper than they are right now.

10. Don't Let Gartner's Data Warehouse Magic Quadrant Confuse You Curt Monash puzzles over Grartner's grades for "ability to excecute."

11. eBay's Enormous Data Warehouses Detailed Curt Monash explains the auction giant's use of analytics, and Teradata and Greenplum infrastructure.

12. A Last Look at Open Source BI This category is now mature, says Seth Grimes, so he sizes up the market before curtailing his coverage.

13. SPSS Is Not the Story; IBM's Vision for Analytics Is Too many observers got too worked up about the SPSS deal; as Neil Raden explains, IBM is putting a lot more into analytics than this one vendor acquisition.

14. IBM Taps SPSS Analytics Software Months before the SPSS acquisition was announced, I explained that IBM was going ahead with deep levels of integration.

15. SAS Gets with the (Open Source) Program SAS was less than effusive about R in a NY Times interview, but Hell hath no fury like an open source movement scorned. Seth Grimes reports on SAS' mea culpa and embrace of open programming languages.

We'll keep our keyboards at the ready and do our best to go beyond the headlines in 2010.

Happy New Year! Doug HenschenNews coverage gives you one version of the truth, but there's nothing like the instant expert analysis blogs can bring to breaking stories. Here are the top-15 posts of the year from the Intelligent Enterprise blogosphere: