Tuesday, October 13. 2009

Bentley Systems' CEO Comments on Economic Outlook

At a press conference today, concurrent with the BE Inspired Awards Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bentley Systems CEO, Greg Bentley, commented on his observations of the economic climate for his company and whether stimulus money provided by countries worldwide was having a positive impact for his business. "Stimulus is helping…but, infrastructure professionals are having a hard time. We are not seeing any upturn. Remember, infrasturure isn't for stimulus but it is for sustaining, said Bentley. 'Projects that are shovel-ready have already had their design work."

Bentley's remarks were based on the fact that the company can track software usage and that those usage levels were down at this time.

Podcast: Google Maps Changes US Base Data, Adds Parcels and Crowdsourcing

This past week Google prompted a flurry of discussion by announcing some changes to its data and functionality in Google Maps. There’s new data and new feedback tools and some anxiety in the geospatial world. Our editors separate fact from fiction and offer our take on the implications of these changes.

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Wednesday, September 23. 2009

50% Expansion of GIS Market Predicted by ARC Advisory Group in Five Years

ARC Advisory Group, a market research firm focused on the manufacturing, energy and supply chain IT sectors, has issued a prediction (press release) that the GIS market will grow 50% within the next five years based on a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.3%. Clint Reiser, the report's author states that, "The market for 2009 is $1.48 billion. That is a slight reduction from 2008, which we have at $1.511 billion." This revenue number is inclusive of software, implementation services, maintenance & support, and software as a service revenues. According to ARC Advisory Group, this phenominal growth will be the result of two driving forces:

1. Smart Grid initiatives - according to the report, "The Smart Grid initiative will introduce distributed generation and new devices into the electric power grid.  This will require substantial network reengineering.  GIS is the likely technology to be used for the design, analysis, and ongoing management of the new network configuration."

2. Emerging economies - according to the report, "Growth in the mid to latter years of the forecast period will be driven by increased adoption of GIS in emerging markets such as Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East; and a return to spending in North America and Europe by industries hardest hit by the global economic downturn."

This report seems to validate IDC market analyst David Sonnen's opinion reported in today's article in which Sonnen was asked about the growth of the business analytics market that is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.3%. "Right now, it looks like spatial analytics will grow a bit faster - how much faster is hard to say. But, there is currently a lot of interest in spatial technology broadly, and I expect that interest will translate into increasing revenue as the recession abates," said Sonnen.

We have now two reports estimating the growth of the GIS market sector to be projected to grow somewhere in the 7.3% to 9.3% range. The recently released Daratech market research report puts revenue at approximately $2.3 Billion and growth to be down 0.7% in the private sector and up only 4.1% in the public sector.

For those of you who are always looking for the "growth numbers" of GIS, this perhaps more data than we have had in several years.

Tuesday, September 22. 2009

Podcast: deCarta Supports OpenStreetMap

This past week's big news was deCarta's announcement of support for the crowdsourced OpenStreetMaps geographic data across its product line. What does that mean for other companies in the mapping tools space, the data space and for end users of these products?

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Thursday, September 17. 2009

What's Going on at CH2M HILL?

Earlier this week former senior members of the CH2M HILL Enterprise Spatial Solutions group launched Spatial Development International (SpatialDev). "The sweet spot for our new start-up company is combining our traditional enterprise GIS implementation experience with our knowledge of emerging geospatial platforms," per the site. I know of the team from its work on AgCommons and WhereCampAfrica.

via @David_Sonnen

On Wednesday, CH2M HILL sold its information-management division to Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm that focuses on the IT industry. The company says it want to focus on its core business of engineering and construction.

- Denver Business Journal

Tuesday, September 8. 2009

China GIS Growth: Homegrown

China Economic Net has a not very well sourced article about the growth of the geospatial market in the country. Among the interesting tidbits:

Made-in-China geographic information system softwares represented by SuperMap and MapGIS have been emerging in succession and formed early scale.

Up to now, made-in-China 3D GIS softwares have taken up half of native market shares. A great deal of softwares in the industries like remote sensing and navigation have also realized independent innovation and occupied over 90 percent of native market shares.

There's a nod the past stats of 20 percent growth per year, but there's no numbers associated with the recent situation.