Thursday, May 4. 2006

Google OneBox and GIS

Google announced OneBox some weeks ago as an appliance to aid in enterprise access to data. It spoke more about it at Interop, held this week in Las Vegas. Two interesting points come out of Byte and Switch's coverage:

Dave Girouard, director of Google's enterprise division, explained that most firms have not tackled the key question of how their employees access data. "In the corporate market, in the enterprise, we are not delivering enough value to end users," he explained.

I'm sure a case can be made - and Google is the one to make it. Unlike the fear that strikes in people's eyes when faced with Oracle, there is usually great calm when they work with Google apps - from search to Earth to SketchUp.

David Dean, network manager at Yuma County told Byte and Switch that he is keen to hear more about the OneBox device. "We would be interested in allowing [our] constituencies to get access to public information via a OneBox," he says, adding that the county could also tie its Geographical Information System (GIS) to Google Earth.

That was certainly my first thougth after reading about OneBox. While Google has many partners in the OneBox endeavor (from Oracle to Salesforce.com to SAS), at this point I'd be hard pressed to see a name GIS company in that list anytime soon. That doesn't mean integration won't happen, just that it will with help of, around, or perhaps despite traditional players. Expect more of this sort of announcement to pave the way; it details how consultants integrated San Mateo's (California) GeoMedia implementation with Google Earth.