Earlier this week, I had a quick meeting with Mikael Hagström, our VP of Operations for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. As you might imagine, he has a pretty good handle on the use of business analytics around the world. Mikael provided some good suggestions on content for the 2009 issues of sascom magazine and some insights on a broad range of topics including:

• A public sector implementation of SAS in Europe that qualifies as one of the largest enterprise BI implementations currently underway.
• New, global risk regulations to be expected as a result of the current financial crisis and government bail outs.
• The mention of SAS by one country's president in her statement to the nation, describing the benefits of their new SAS system as a way to improve health and education while avoiding tax increases, and turn a budget deficit into a budget surplus.
• The continuing importance of data integration and interoperability between systems for all industries and business analytics solutions.
• A growing interest in business analytics in the oil and gas industries around the world.
• The continuing queries and questions from customers about the current state of the post-acquisition BI industry.
• A popular UN census project that's gathering new intelligence about populations in developing countries.
• The proposed legislation around sustainability in Europe, and the shadow legislation that's likely coming on its heels.

So - wow - I didn't realize exactly how much we covered in 30 minutes until I sat down to type this list. We could - and I hope we will - do an article or blog post or two on each of those topics in 2009. Which would you like to hear more about?

I'm going to start by digging a bit into the last one: sustainability. Check back next week for posts from me and others at SAS to learn more about corporate sustainability, green projects at SAS and what our customers are asking about going green.