Podcast Blog Posts

ESRI on-demand GIS web services - GIS & Location Technology Podcast

Posted on March 28, 2006 by Farallon Geographics Team

This weeks podcast was produced at the ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference, in Palm Springs, CA. Dennis Wuthrich and Jeff Saunders of Farallon were joined by special guest, Mike Tait, Director of Internet Solutions for ESRI.
They discuss:

• ArcWeb Services for on-demand geospatial analysis using web services
• ArcWeb Explorer goes beyond Google Earth with backend geoprocessing, easier mashups, Flash and SVG graphics.
• The advantages of a GIS SOA model for business
• How Google Earth is helping to create demand for GIS in almost any business
• How GIS will change in the future: maps maybe, backend geoprocessing absolutely

ArcWeb Service and the SOA model for business
- ArcWeb Serivces enables businesses to use geospatial technology via web services even if they don’t have the typical GIS back end infrastructure (staff, hardware, software) and GIS is not a primary focus of their business or department.  They can gain the benefits of adding geoprocessing to their business intelligence and analysis without the investment or GIS expertise.
- ESRI has launched a GIS utility computing model, or SOA model which includes data hosting and automatic backup/replication, full security.
- For businesses that are not heavily focused on location services, there is a 3-5 times cost savings to run GIS on a managed service environment than trying to do it all in house.
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ArcWeb Explorer
- ArcWeb Explorer (AWX) is a Web-based map viewing application using Flash 8 (and soon SVG). The vector mapping technology enables maps to render quickly in the browser instead of having the server render them.
- Like Google Earth, it is free for personal use.
- AWX’s public API makes it easy to create custom UI and mashups. But AWX also includes some automatic processing capabilities to make mashups easy for the non-programmers.  For example: a user uploads an excel spreadsheet with addresses, the back end application then automatically geocodes the data and sends it back to the browser to be mapped as vectors:  Mashups without coding.
- SVG has the advantage of being XML based so it is easy to integrate into Web 2.0 type applications. Farallon has worked with SVG documents and and has been able to query the XML to do very sophisticated multi-layered and interactive presentations and analysis
- SVG data from AWX can be transformed easily into KML format to integrate into Google mashups and visa versa
- Flash support in AWX gives business a way to retain the value of vector graphics but still keep their data private

What about Google Earth
Google Earth has jet-fueled interest in GIS and ESRI. It is actually preparing the market space by educating the consumer audience.  But Google Earth is currently focused only in the internet and mobile markets.  Enterprises that want a more complete solution that fuses across all aspects of their business can then migrate to ArcWeb Services.

The future of GIS
Although demand is rapidly increasing, still enterprises aren’t yet fully taking advantage of GIS - why is this?
- The traditional GIS map may have very little informational value to a CIO. They may not know how to process the information or the kinds of questions they are asking are not readily displayed on a map.  However historically, GIS has presented itself as enhanced mapping technology.
-  The real value of GIS in the integrated aspects of the geography - how geoprocessing integrates with business systems.
- The new APIs in ArcWeb Explorer and Google Earth make it easier to create these integrations.  More and more, the GIS aspect will happen in the background and data will simply pass into a standard business analysis analysis.  In many cases, a map will not even be seen.  The geospatial data will just become an integral component of any kind of business decision or business transaction.

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GIS Industry trends for 2006 - GIS & Location Technology Podcast

Posted on February 10, 2006 by Farallon Geographics Team

In this Episode, a team from Farallon looks at the GIS Industry trends for 2006. Topics include:

• Autodesk GIS Web mapping server goes open source - what this means and what is their motivation.
• GIS vs Spatial Information Management (SIM) - how are they different.
• Google Earth - why is it cool and how is it transforming GIS from the realm of specialists to mainstream IT.

Autodesk and Open Source:
We all agreed that Autodesk is going the open source route for several reasons:
1) Autodesk is currently has little market share, so by going open source they can quickly grab marketshare.
2) For every 1 GIS user, there are 10-15 CAD users (Autodesk’s primary market). But open sourcing, Autodesk can move some of the CAD users to explore GIS
3) By tapping in to the open source developer community, Autodesk can accelerate their development and quickly add new features.

GIS vs Spatial Information Management (SIM):
For the most part we agreed that this is just new jargon for existing technology, motivated by the authors allegiances to products and companies. However there were some interesting differences we discussed.
1) GIS is analysis of spatial relationships between raw data sets, and the accompanying cartography and maps
2) SIM is broader covering everything from the tools used to obtain the raw data (including GPS, datatables, RFID, etc), to how to store and process the raw data to how to present it to the user. 
3) SIM is primarily about data and data management, while GIS is primarily about analysis. But GIS can be considered a subset of of the broadest definition of SIM.

Google Earth and how it is shaking up the GIS industry:
We will talk about this topic more in future podcasts, but we just wanted to briefly look at why Google Earth is making such waves in the GIS industry
1) Google Earth put a magnifying glass on location technology. With all of the various Google Earth/Google Maps mashups, users at all experience levels are beginning to learn about the ubiquity and importance of location information
2) Google Earth makes mapping and spatial analysis entertaining - it is 3D and easily navigable.
3) Maps and even 2D aerial photos are difficult for most people to understand.  3D really improves the comprehensibility.
4) Google Earth allows for specific subsets of GIS functionality. A mashup is not as flexible as a GIS, but it does the one or two things it is supposed to do, very well.
5) Because the Google Earth API is so accessible, developing location mashups can become a community activity, where individuals can contribute.

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