Bentley intends to be the market leader in energy analysis and simulation as well as supporting a better means for building efficiency. Citing its reseller agreement with Environmental Design Solutions Ltd for its Tas software, Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems said at this week's BE Conference in Baltimore that, "the product’s virtue is its enormous scalability. With Taz software [you have] a complete building information model (BIM) with energy standards."

For Bentley, 2007 was a record year for technology acquisitions which will support this vision – LEAP Software (analysis and design for concrete bridges; ProConcrete available at the end of 2009); ECT International Inc (electrical control systems; reducing electrical design time); Hevacomp Ltd. (virtual energy models and software tools for electrical design for promoting low energy solutions; it is the largest UK building services provider and also produces HVAC solutions to improve energy efficiency of buildings.

Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems cited a report from Daratech, the market research firm, that had named his company the #2 provider of geospatial software in the world. In the report, Daratech puts ESRI @ ~$540 Million and Bentley at ~$200 Million in revenues for geospatial software. Bentley said, "There is not any avenue of our solutions that is separated from geospatial."

Vince Poscente, a former Canadian Olympic star in speed skiing delivered a rousing keynote address at the Pitney Bowes MapWorld Conference last week, a merged event between the user groups of MapInfo and Group 1. Now a motivational speaker, Poscente provided a exhilarating ride into the world of business strategy and how to deal with a few bumps along the way. And in his case, a bump led to losing a medal at the 1992 Olympics.

Poscente offered that in today’s business climate he defines companies in four categories:
The Zeppelin, a lumbering giant with little forward motion.
The Balloon, something that just floats along with a few ups and downs along the way.
The Bottle Rocket, a high flier at first but one likely to fizzle later and drop like a stone.
The Jet, where alignment and speed must coincide to achieve optimum results.

Respond, an alliance of European and other international organizations, has released maps, including digital data that is freely available for downloading, that were used for flood mitigation preparations before Cyclone Nargis. In addition, UNOSAT, a Respond partner, has produced maps related directly to floods as a result of Nargis.

The Pitney Bowes MapInfo and Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software divisions will be going through a gradual transition to a new name. Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI?) will be introduced throughout the fall. During this time, the MapInfo name is NOT disappearing and the company will still be focusing on location intelligent solutions. Mike Hickey, current president of both divisions will remain as president and will now directly report to the CEO of Pitney Bowes. Hickey said the name change underwent substantial vetting.

My take: At first, I thought it was a clever way to use "BI" as a double meaning but Hickey says that was mere coincidence. The name is OK. It's not lightening in a bottle but is not bland either. It says what they do and that's enough. In general, what you have to appreciate is that the combined entity has a lot of products and a substantial cache of very targeted solutions. The trick, as the company fully appreciates, is that they need to find a workflow to offer clients that clearly shows how the solutions can be used in tandem, or not. PBBI has several stand alone products that don't need to be integrated. Naming is important and not trivial but perhaps of secondary concern to explaining that value of the solutions.

In this podcast sponsored by Oracle, the company's Spatial technology game plan will be discussed. Jim Steiner, Senior Director of In this podcast learn how Aon Re Global, an Oracle customer and the largest insurance intermediary in the world, uses Oracle Spatial, Oracle Fusion Middleware MapViewer, and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to perform more accurate risk analysis. Aon’s Dan Schuffert will provide a specific example of how they determine the risk for customers whose policies are within or out of wind pool boundaries, such as Florida or the Carolinas.

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Other resources mentioned in the podcast:

Oracle Spatial

Oracle MapViewer

Oracle Spatial 11g Book

The podcast lasts 14 minutes.

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