Can you put a subset of data on the mobile hardware?

Yes. In fact, one use case is for customers to pre-load different USB drives with different data sets (i.e. different parts of a country) that would be readily available for use in the field.

Is this in fact the entire server code base (which I guess is pretty big) or a "trimmed down" version?

It's the exact Earth Server software that runs on server racks, but it is lightweight enough to run on a portable device

Is this basically a new "licensing option" or is it really new software?

It's a different way to deploy the Google Earth Enterprise software.

--- original post -----

Google just contacted us about portable version of our Google Earth Enterprise Server (GEES); it was announced yesterday. Recall that GEES is the version of GE that an organization can buy and run internally, typically with its own data. I dug up from the product page how the portable version works:

The Google Earth Enterprise Portable is loaded on a customer supplied USB drive or a large partition on a user's laptop using VMWare. Options are available for single- or multiple-user access to the portable software.

I agree with the e-mail that suggests there are situations where a "field version" of the data may be useful, including during disasters were connectivity to the "mother ship" is not available. Still, there are some questions not answered: Do you take the whole server platform? Must you take all the data? Is this a licensing option rather than new software? I've posed those questions back to Google and will let you know what I learn.

- Google Blog post
- product page