Update: Report: Rolta Failed to Serve Indian Army Image Analysis Needs

Update: Rolta’s founder, chairman and chief executive, Kamal K Singh responds to the allegations and details the company focus on homeland security.

- DNA India

--- original post 12/8/11 ---

The Hindu has an in depth report that suggests that confusion in contracts between Rolta, which delivered a custom package of software from Intergraph, Bentley and Oracle for image analysis, and the Indian Army have led to software slowdowns and the need to reinvest to updated licenses. There is also a suggestion that Rolta repackaged Intergraph software without permission.

- The Hindu

From the GIS Archives

Digging out some historical goodies that were at my parents house...

The Desktop Mapping Guidebook The 1991 publication is by Strategic Mapping and the intro letter is signed by Steve Poizner. Price: $4.95. I'm thinking I got that when the SMI rep came to visit my firm back in the day. We did not go with AtlasGIS, but I remember it being very impressive.

Cadence Magazine, 1995. It seems I ghost wrote a letter to the editor for my product manager correcting some errors in an article about ArcCAD. I spelled shapefiles as two words. I wonder if it was two words back then? I later went on to write several articles for Cadence.

Microstation Manager, The Monthly Independent Publication for the Intergraph Professional, June 1992. The one with Bentley brothers in a picture from childhood on the cover. Did I get that when I went to interview at Bentley? While I was at Esri? I don't recall.

ArcCAD mousepad. Esri U.S. regional offices and their phone numbers are listed. There were 10 listed, plus Redlands.

Intergraph Settles with Bentley

Court documents reveal the eight year suit is over. Intergraph is basically selling Bentley $200M in stock.

.

..Cobalt BSI Holding, which bought Intergraph in 2006, will sell back to Bentley its 15.6 million shares of Bentley stock, at a purchase price of just over $12 per share, totaling about $198 million, according to court documents. In July 2010, Sweden-based Hexagon AB bought Intergraph from Cobalt for $2.1 billion.
The settlement total includes $9.9 million in fees and expenses awarded to Cobalt’s attorneys, including Bartley Loftin III of Huntsville and his firm, Maynard Cooper & Gale.

Oh, and the two companies won’t talk about the settlement, save to say it was mutually agreeable.

- AL.com

Podcast: Is Esri UC the only GIS Event that Matters?

If indeed the Esri UC is the most important GIS event in the industry, what does that mean for other events? Other communities that do not participate? Directions Magazine editors contemplate the implications and what options are available to bring together the whole community.

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What’s News from the #GITA Exhibit Floor… Here are the Crib Notes

Rolta: Biggest company doing geospatial not known in the U.S. They will make waves by integrating business intelligence with their location technology tools staring with their OnPoint product and now their acquisition of OneGIS. They are touting their GeoSpatial Fusion solutions which we profiled at last year’s ESRI UC. One of their competitive strengths is to talk the language of the business unit managers which is to implement performance management tools like key performance indicators (KPI) in a BI dashboard user interface. Could they creep into Oracle’s space? Actually, Rolta is one of the largest Oracle shops for systems integration.

Intergraph is taking on "smart grid" as a challenge to roll out new solutions to clients. With partnering agreements with Siemens and smaller companies like eMeter the company is positioning itself with key players to attack utilities investing in new sensor technology and as well as laying fiber. G/Technology is now reved to version 10.1. and In/Service is reved to 8.2.1.  Intergraph is integrating its technology with Siemens’ solutions for power system analysis.

A very cool survey application on the iPhone called Terrapad is being rolled out by Fasterre, a Montreal-based company. Primarily the tool is used for field asset data collection.

Vertical Mapping Resources was demonstrating a 3D terrain display whereby you can visualize vector data with an image backdrop. The unique aspect of their solution was that the 3D is now possible standard monitor and 3D glasses synched to the display but it is not like the old days of having huge monitors and equally huge stereo glasses to see in 3D.

Bentley Systems was showing their solutions for substation design and visualization. You can do things now in a CAD system that were just not possible just a few years ago. It’s worth seeing the video.

Critigen has come out from under their spin out by CH2M HILL and is focused on large projects for sustainability, state and local government, managed services, security, and environmental. It is also building websites for citizen awareness such as for solar potential so that people can look at their home or office building and determine solar potential. Eco-mapping is another focus area for tracking greenhouse gas emissions from transportation or waste. Many programs they are in support of getting the average citizen to understand that one person can make a difference.

Telvent is also tackling smart grid projects. They are supporting projects to help utilities reduce outages and manage the electric network.  They are pitching ways to enable customer choice by helping them lower bills and enable credible feedback to the utility. Telvent has a complete Distribution Management ( DM) system that integrates real-time weather and load forecasting as well as aggregating meter information (AMI) with a meter data management system. Telvent collects data to a master repository and integrated mapping solution.

CartoPac Field Solutions is singularly focused on field data collection. The company has released CartoPac 3.0.

And hidden far from the maddening crowd, over with the folks exhibiting in the ACSM area was a new company called Wuda Geomatics Co., Ltd., a Chinese geospatial company. According to company literature, "Wuda Geo possesses the most comprehensive first class licenses for surveying and mapping in China and was awarded the ISO9001 certificate in 2002." Apparently, over 10 years of development has gone into developing a product called "GeoStar." Will they burst onto the U.S. market anytime soon and challenge established vendors? Watch this space.