GeoMedia 6.1: Continued Product Enhancements Plus a Focus on 3D

Intergraph announced new product enhancements for GeoMedia 6.1, their flagship geospatial solution. The emphasis for this version centered on support for the spatial data infrastructure (SDI) initiatives in the U.S. and Europe (INSPIRE) as well as for 3D visualization.

Enhancements include:

• GeoMedia 6.1 will integrate with Microsoft’s Bing Maps for the Enterprise and Google Maps via KML;
• Planned usability improvements in thematic generation and display (coming in Q3)
• Support for new OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) for viewing imagery
• Regional address geocoding models are supported, a European requirement, and address matching performance improvements were made
• OGC Web Catalogue Services now conform to ISO standards
• a web feature service for transactions called WFS-T (coming in Q3)
• improvements to elevation value assignment during data capture – the snap to height feature (coming in Q3)
• support for Flash to replace SVG for graphic rendering in GeoMedia WebMap (coming in Q4)
• support for SQL Server 2008 Spatial as an option (coming early 2010)

• Separate database for storing cartographic edits to maintain the integrity of source data that eliminates the need for multiple copies of the source
• Provide both automated and manual editing tools for cartographic adjustments; automated style suppression
• Planned automated generalization (coming in 2010)

Specific to road, rail and other network applications, the company announced:

• a new feature called "Multiple Linear Referencing System"
• support for overweight/oversized vehicle routing
• Straight Line Diagrams – linear information in a straight line view in addition to the geographic view

Intergraph 09 Opens With CEO Wise Stating “We’re not afraid to set aggressive goals.”

Intergraph CEO Halsey Wise (at right) opened the 2009 Intergraph user conference by acknowledging the global economic turbulence, with a hurricane graphic in the background to emphasize his point, and by stating "We are not afraid to set aggressive goals. We will use this trough to power through to the future. Some of our competitors have not even had the courage to hold their user event [this year]."

Wise cited several performance metrics to illustrate the success the company has realized:

• In 2008, the company reached $808 million
• Intergraph has grown operating profits 9x since 2003
• Intergraph R&D spending was $95.2M in 2008, an increase of 40% over last five years
• 32% of revenue comes from products that did not exist in 2003

Wise has set a goal of reaching $1 billion in revenue by 2012 and told the audience to "pay attention…next year we will announce new products and maybe new acquisitions."