I’ve been using self organizing maps (or SOM) to analyse client data for more than a year now. In the beginning I tried some commercial software, but I did not like the fact that it was too easy to just randomly click some buttons and a map showed up. I wanted to know what was happening under the hood.
Even though R has been my favorite language to program in since a few months, one thing it is not designed to do is make your plots look anywhere near good. With this I mean that those plots are not the stuff I can just save and put into a client presentation.