2006 August 17

This issue sponsored by

Professional Surveyor Magazine

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Editor's Introduction

At the ESRI user conference, last week, I interviewed managers and engineers from several companies. In this week's issue I feature three, representing key GIS-enabling technologies: Stratus Technologies, which makes high-availability servers; GeoEye, which collects and sells satellite imagery; and Magellan (formerly Thales Navigation), which manufactures GPS receivers.

As always, I encourage your feedback!

— Matteo

Interview with Jim Harris, of Stratus Technologies

ESRI is calling this "the year of the server." So, at last week's ESRI user conference, I talked with Jim Harris, Director of Marketing, Government, and Transportation & Logistics for Stratus Technologies, a company that makes servers.

  1. What does Stratus Technologies do?

    We offer basically only one product: servers that are designed to never fail. We advertise "five nines" of availability, which means 99.999 percent of uptime. Our server is two computers inside one box, acting in lockstep, both doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. We've been around for 26 years. For the first 20 years, we were in areas with a proprietary operating system. So, the servers and the operation and maintenance were very expensive. About five years ago, we developed this technology and put it in a Windows environment. Two months ago we announced the general release of Linux. So, now we have open systems that will offer you five nines of availability.


    Stratus Technologies servers in use at the ESRI User Conference 2006

  2. What is your role?

    My responsibility is to find companies such as ESRI [whose] applications are becoming more and more mission-critical, which puts more importance on the server.

  3. How do your servers differ from clusters?

    [In a cluster you have] two, name-brand computers: if one fails, the other one takes over. This fail-over requires many cables, the software has to be cluster-aware, and you have to have a person who actually knows how it all works. Our servers are so simple that you really just take them out of the box and plug them in. We have two of everything. If you have a one-CPU system, we physically have two. For every memory chip there is a mirror memory chip, for every disk drive there is another disk drive. We have eliminated any single point of failure in the server.

Read more …

Interview with Mark Brender, of GeoEye

At the ESRI user conference, last week, I talked with Mark E. Brender, V.P., Corporate Communications & Marketing for GeoEye, the commercial remote sensing company formed in January as a result of ORBIMAGE's acquisition of Space Imaging.

  1. I just searched for GeoEye on the New York Times and nothing came up…

    We had imagery in the New York Times just last week. We have a heck of a job to do to brand a new-named company. We spent the last 6 months merging health plans, 401 K's, data processing systems, business systems, and cultures and tweaking org charts. Now we have a window of opportunity somewhere in the fall where we are taking a higher profile. What will help will be when we move toward the launch of GeoEye 1, which will be the world's highest resolution commercial satellite. It will be able to collect imagery with a ground resolution of .41 meters or about 16 inches and map that point to within 3 meters of its true location on the surface of the globe. In many ways it's going to change the way we look at and understand the world.

  2. Companies "launch" products and services all the time. Yours will be literally a launch…

    GeoEye weighs 4,200 pounds (the Ikonos satellite weighs 1,600 pounds) and it will be thrust into orbit on a Boeing Delta 2 rocket. It's going to be agile and will be able to collect 700,000 square kilometers a day (that's 435,000 miles) in panchromatic mode.

Read more …

Interview with Stig Pedersen, of Magellan

At the ESRI user conference, last week, I spoke with Stig Pedersen, Sr. Director of Marketing Strategy, Survey/GIS for Magellan, formerly Thales Navigation, a division of Thales. In July, an investment group led by Shah Capital Partners (SCP) reached a definitive agreement to acquire Thales Navigation. Co-investors who participated with SCP in the transaction included Tudor Group, Galleon Group, Consolidated Press Holdings, AIG SunAmerica, and Eli Broad.

At the conference, Magellan promoted two handheld GPS receivers: the MobileMapper CE and the ProMark3, a single-frequency, handheld survey unit that comes with a GIS data collection program. According to Pedersen, the former is "especially appropriate" for ESRI users and the latter has "a lot of traction in the surveying market" but will also handle centimeter-level GIS applications.

  1. There is much discussion about "bridging the gap" between surveyors and GIS. What do you think?

    I think it's more of a generational gap than a philosophy gap. Surveyors are eminently qualified to do a lot of GIS work. I think it's more of an optical surveying to GPS surveying gap as opposed to GIS philosophy versus surveying philosophy.

  2. What is Magellan's niche?

    Our position in the market is to take the complexity and the cost out of GPS. That places us quite well to reach some of the customers that need to adopt GPS technology. Jumping to full GPS deployments is too much for many people, but adding GPS control to surveys is a fairly low barrier to cross.

Read more …

Briefly Noted

According to preliminary estimates, more than 14,000 people attended last week's ESRI user conference in San Diego, reflecting a 5% increase from 2005. More than 500 people attended the Education Conference and more than 300 attended the Survey and GIS Summit, both of which took place just prior to the user conference.

News Briefs

Please note: I have culled the following news items from press releases and have not independently verified them.

  1. CONTRACTS & COLLABORATIONS

    1. CompassCom Software Corporation and ISEE Corp. Universal, Inc. (ISEE) have entered into a strategic relationship to offer their combined technologies and services to provide customers with a comprehensive Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Mobile Digital Video Recorder (MDRV) solution. Read more …

    2. GeoEye has selected BAE Systems' SOCET SET and ClearFlite software for a project that will create three-dimensional maps for hundreds of airports worldwide. Read more …

    3. EarthData International, Inc. played a role in the making of the movie World Trade Center, Oliver Stone's portrayal of five Port Authority police officers who battle the devastation of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Read more …

    4. Pictometry International Corp., a provider of digital, aerial oblique imagery and measuring software systems, and Intergraph Corporation a provider of Spatial Information Management (SIM) software, have entered a marketing alliance. Read more …

    5. Emergency Services integrators (ESi), have entered a strategic relationship with ESRI to offer a geographically-enabled incident management system for first responders. Read more …

    6. ESRI has signed an agreement with the Organization of American States (OAS) whereby ESRI will support two projects promoting sustainable development. Read more …

    7. Pictometry International Corp., a provider of digital, aerial oblique imagery and measuring software systems, and Harris Corporation, a provider of imagery solutions for the visualization, mapping, and government markets, have released new 3D modeling products. Read more …

  2. PRODUCTS

    1. DeLorme has introduced Street Atlas USA 2007 and Street Atlas USA 2007 Plus. Read more …

    2. Earlier this year, Topcon Positioning Systems introduced the GMS-110 GIS data collection system, which operates with software solutions based on ESRI's ArcPad. Read more …

    3. LeadDog Consulting, LLC has released geographic databases of city streets for the Indian cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Noida, Farridabad, and Ghaziabad to support asset-tracking, government, military, and commercial GIS applications. Read more …

    4. Red Hen Systems has released Red Hen Media Server (RHMS), which enables users of spatial multimedia to collaborate using a standard Web browser and provides real-time updating, eliminating the need for manual version control. Read more …

  3. CONFERENCES & TRAINING

    1. Intergraph 2007 will take place in Nashville, Tennessee, May 21-24.

    2. John H. Dunnigan, a senior official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will be the keynote speaker for the 19th Annual GIS in the Rockies Conference in Denver, Colorado, September 13 - 15. Read more …

    3. The 2006 GIS in the Rockies Conference, to be held September 13-15 in Denver, Colorado, will feature at least fifty exhibits on the conference show floor. Read more …

    4. A Homeland Defense Journal training conference, "Location-based Social Networking for Crisis Management," will take place on October 3, from 8:30 to 4:00, at the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Read more …

    5. The 32nd International Symposium on Remote Sensing of the Environment (ISRSE) will take place in San Jose, Costa Rica on 2007 June 25-29. The deadline for abstracts is 2006 November 15.

  4. PEOPLE

    1. DigitalGlobe, a provider of commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products, has appointed Marc Tremblay as General Manager of its Commercial Business Unit and Steve Larned as Chief Marketing Officer. Read more …

  5. OTHER

    1. Intermap Technologies Corp. has accelerated its plan for creating a high-resolution, three-dimensional map of Western Europe. Read more …

    2. Skagit County, in Washington State, has recently released an Internet map service called Crime Map that allows interactive mapping of 911 crime-related incidents. Read more …

    3. U.S. Senator John Sununu and Representative Jeb Bradley joined Global Relief Technologies (GRT) on August 11 in unveiling the GRT Virtual Network Operations Center (VNOC). Read more …

    4. URISA's Chapter Relations Committee (CRC) has announced that the organization's Washington State chapter (WAURISA) won the 2006 Outstanding Chapter of the Year Award. Read more …

    5. East View Cartographic (EVC) has acquired a collection of geological maps and atlases from the Telberg Geological Map Service. Read more …

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