Tuesday, April 14. 2009

Podcast: The State of GeoData Formats

This week we look at geodata formats - what's new, what's needed, what's working and what's not. Among our topics: Google's newly announced Map Data API, the Shapefile 2.0 Manifesto, SpatiaLite and the state of KML in the wild.


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Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, ESRI, Open Source, Microsoft, Oracle, Autodesk, Standards, Databases, Directions on the News Podcast, Data at 01:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, March 31. 2009

Autodesk Labs Updates Google Earth Extension for AutoCAD 2010 Family

Scott Sheppard reports on Labs' blog, that a new version is available for the newly released AutoCAD 2010 family of products (it also supports 2009 and 2008 versions). The functionality remains the same:

It allows you to import a Google Earth image into AutoCAD, publish your 3D model to Google Earth, drape a Google Earth image onto a 3D mesh in AutoCAD, and attach time span information to your model.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Autodesk at 15:29 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, March 30. 2009

Plan Ahead: Autodesk to Triple Upgrade Fees

Ralph Grabowski at World CAD Access reports that Autodesk has made public its planned pricing for upgrades for those not on subscription after March 16 2010. In short, upgrades and cross grades (moving to another Autodesk product) will cost 1/2 the cost of a new license.

Grabowksi notes that as Autodesk hits customers when they are "down" (in the recression), it provides another opportunity for competitors.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Autodesk at 06:00 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, March 4. 2009

Shapefile 2.0 Manifesto

Alex Willmer, a database administrator in the Birmingham, England, offers a blog post on his "Misspelled nemesis club" blog exploring the need for and candidates to be the successor to the shapefile as "the" de facto standard for geospatial data. He suggests three possible options (ESRI's File Geodatabase, Autodesk's Spatial Data Format (SDF), and Alessandro Furieri's Spatialite). In the end, he begs ESRI to open up the File Geodatabase. He chides ESRI for promising a library to read and write the format when the format launched and not delivering.

via @sgillies (on Twitter)

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI, Autodesk, Standards at 08:24 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, February 26. 2009

Bass Somber on Autodesk's Quarterly Numbers

Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, somberly began his quarterly call with investors and analysts by indicating his disappointment with the company's quarterly and yearly report and said that the news was not at all what he is accustomed to delivering during investor calls. Bass however believes that Autodesk is positioned well for any potential investments as a result of the recently passed U.S. stimulus package. The company reported that their direct business held up better than that of their partner channel.

"All aspects of our business is being impacted by this slowdown," said Carl Bass, CEO. Declines in revenue were seen across all geographies. Bass said that emerging economies will be an opportunity after this economic downturn. But the company is going through a restructuring phase that includes a hiring freeze, travel restrictions and reduction in head count. The global economic environment has impacted Autodesk's ability to forecast beyond the first quarter of the new fiscal year and they expect a loss for this quarter. The full benefit of restructuring will not be realized until the second quarter. Operating cash flow will be negative for the first quarter as well. The company expects their operating margins to increase throughout the coming year if the economic situation remains the same. Asked by an analyst if he could see a bottom to the market, Bass said that looking broadly on all the economic indicators, not just his sales, "I don't really see any signs [of a bottom]."

When asked a "geography" question by an analyst who wanted to know what regions were not affected by the economy or were relatively strong, Bass joked that Antarctica and maybe Greenland were unaffected, "but perhaps not Iceland as we have seen." More seriously he noted that, "Maybe China or India...but I haven't seen an unscathed territory out there."  

Asked about what the company might do with its cash position, Bass indicated that at these stock prices, the company monitors the situation and might consider a buy back of shares. Regarding possible acquisitions Bass said that, "Our tolerance for acquisitions has gone way down in this market."

Asked if he was considering a more drastic cut back in the company expenses and size given that the analyst asking the question believed that Autodesk could not sustain the revenue levels from the emerging markets, Bass conceded that he did not know what the appropriate level of his company's size should be but would watch carefully during the current year. The same analyst thought that perhaps the company should return to levels seen in 2002 and not 2006 as Bass had indicated earlier in the call. Bass said, however, "We need to size this business considerably smaller."

Posted by Joe Francica in Autodesk at 16:06 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, January 28. 2009

Update 1: A Third Proposal Regarding Geo and the Stimulus: Investing in NSDI

Update 1/28: NSGIC has endorsed this proposal, along with the earlier GIS for the Nation proposal.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Intergraph, Autodesk, Infrastructure at 17:28 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0) |