This week SAP and IBM both announced major milestones in their analytics strategies, while two decided to be charitable and give back the community.

On Wednesday SAP introduced a new version of its Sybase Afaria device management software. The upgraded introduces improved end-point control, features smoother directory integration and includes a new API that gives admins more flexibility with policy enforcement.

Afaria comes with several other additions, including a component dedicated to spotting jail-broken iOS devices.

On Thursday, Big Blue announced the acquisition of StoredIQ for an undisclosed amount. The firm’s technology sniffs out inefficiencies and unused information in corporate networks: the software identifies where the data is, checks whether or not it meets compliance requirements defined by the organization, and performers low-level optimization to reduce information footprint..

StoredIQ’s solution is used by over 120 clients spread across several of IBM’s key markets, including government, finance, healthcare and several other sectors.

While the whales are working on getting ahead, Pentaho and Blekko chose to focus on their users this holiday season. The former launched an event called “12 Days of Visualization” on Monday: the BI firm is releasing a dozen visualization add-ons for its analytics solution until December 20.

Blekko in turn donated data about nearly 150 million web sites to the Common Crawl foundation. The startup runs an emerging search engine that focuses on the notion of open web, an approach that earned it backing from several VCs as well as a number of top apps that use its service. One example is Flipbox, which leverages Blekko’s API to provide its users with customized content recommendations based on their browsing history.