Bentley Geospatial “Press Conference”

It was an informal conference with all the press and a large group from the geospatial team. Here are some of the questions. Questions and answers are parphrased.

Q: Will Bentley support open source?
A: Not at this time. We think users want a company that gets paid for its products. We will support integration with open source.

Q: With geocoordination (core support for projection on the fly) will there be support for OGC Coordinate Transformation Service?
A: We are looking at it.

Q: What are geospatial 3rd party partners doing?
A: Their value add role is different; they are localizing software in the sense of making it work for local workflows/data models. They are not creating “new apps” per se.

Q: What happened to MicroStation Geographics?
A: It dates back to 1995. It was toolkit, not an end-user product and had limited possibilities for users. In 2004 we began to revampthe vision with two products – Bentley Map aimed as an end-user productivity tool and the MicroStation Geospatial Extension geared more to create a platform for customization. (These are expected later this year.)

Q: Will Bentley do more GIS analysis in its products?
A: The analysis is built into the vertical apps.

[Disclosure: Bentley covered travel, hotel and meals.]