Wednesday, August 19. 2009

Appliance to Cloud; Cloud to Server

This is a good time to keep an eye on start ups and how they are repositioning their solutions to and from the cloud. Here are two situations of such moves. Both offer a "second" option and do not negate the original offer.

WeoGeo launched with an appliance that would manage geospatial data. About two years later it offered that same solution as a cloud service (press release).

In contrast consider Altadyn, a CAD solution provider. It first offered its 3DXplorer as a Software as a Service (SAAS) solution. But per Ralph Grabowski at All CAD Access, users didn't like giving up control of their design data. Thus, today the company began shipping "the behind-the-firewall version of its browser-based 3D collaboration, um, software: 3DXplorer Enterprise Edition." In short, they have a choice. The "host your own" solution has these advantages, per the article: performance, security, geographic distribution (neither Grabowski nor I follow that one) and own IT staff, which he suggests means lower cost than using Altadyn's staff.

I suspect that customers will vote on what they "want" with their dollars. It will be interesting to see which option (if either) clients of these solutions select.

Podcast: ITT VIS' Advances in Enterprise Strategies

In this podcast sponsored by ITT Visual Information Solutions, you will learn about ITT VIS’ advances in enterprise strategies and how software is moving away from the desktop. Data cataloging, discovery, and standards are discussed, and hear an introduction to the new enterprise software product, ENVI Enterprise Services.
More information can be found at the ITT VIS website.

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Instructional Technologist Earns Fulbright to do GIS Work

Ok first some definitions. What's an instructional technologist? It's a role typically in a university for someone who helps integrate technology in the curriculum. (One of my high school friends got such a position right out of college and has been at Boston University ever since.) What's a Fulbright? It's a grant for academics that sends you overseas to lecture and do research. (One of the grad students back when I was in college got one. It's a big deal.)

The news then is that Meg Stewart, an instructional technologist at Vassar College, has received the grant to teach and do research at the University of the West Indies in Barbados during the 2009-10 academic year. She'll work on "a mapping project in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, looking at sustainable use of marine resources and making this geospatial information available online in Google Earth and a Web map. She will also teach a geographic information system class..."

Now, this is even more interesting when I realized that Meg (who I have yet to meet) is on the committee for the upcoming NITLE event titled Geospatial Technology in the Liberal Arts at Skidmore College in September, where I've been invited to speak.

- Poughkeepsie Journal

Quote of the Week

"We’re trying to make TomTom navigational systems available to people across all platforms that are important to consumers."

- Tom Murray, TomTom's vice president of marketing development, quoted in the Wall Street Journal in reply to the question of if phone-based nav will replace stand alone devices.

TomTom is obeying one marketing guru's advice: Kill your cash cow. Or as I first heard it from Daniel Burrus (thanks Autodesk for having him speak at CadCamp back in the day!): "Render your cash cow obsolete before other do it for you." (Technotrends, 1993)

Real Estate/Travel Searches Plug into Latest Tech/Data

These announcements feel to me like they should have already happened, but perhaps it's a sign of the economy or that GIS and location technology are not all that mainstream, especially in business.

Orbitz, the travel site, has added StreetView (though it takes some doing to find it) to its hotel map listing. (The LA Times has a nice write up of why you'd use it.)

Trulia, the real estate site, has added neighborhood data from Maponics to its searches, maps and to better support advertising. Per the press release (not yet on the Maponics website, but published elsewhere, like Ris Media): "This new alliance will increase Trulia's neighborhood coverage by more than 300%."