SDI and Intergraph

The topic gets more attention in Europe because of the INSPIRE initiative than it does in the U.S., but discussing how software will support projects related to developing a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) are driving some of Intergraph’s product development. Much like the emphasis the company put into supporting the birth of the Open Geospatial Consortium from a policy and standards position, and also the adoption of Oracle Spatial as preferred data management platform as a marketing wedge with the competition, Intergraph is pushing hard to promote an architecture that will support SDI. To be sure, the move is related to Intergraph’s continued focus on open standards. However, some of the specifications of INSPIRE have been written into the laws of the European Union such that countries must follow these standards. So, the company made sure they staked out their position and emphasized this to its user conference attendees