Directions Magazine – Hungrier vendors will bring us cloud GIS
Directions Magazine runs an interesting article by Philip O’Doherty on GIS and the cloud. While not revolutionary, the article provides a comprehensive summary of the issues surrounding GIS and cloud computing today, and offers a few predictions.
One such prediction is that it will be small, nimble, and hungrier vendors who will provide GIS customers with cloud offerings. Without naming any names, the author posits that the changes “from providing traditional on-premise solutions to offering software purely as a service are not easy for large incumbent technology vendors.”
Further writes O’Doherty:
“Ironically, inability to innovate is one of the major problems that plague large established software companies. In fact the ability to bring new products and solutions to market tends to be inversely proportional to size, previous success and profitability. This problem is obvious in the GIS sector, dominated as it is by a few large incumbents, which over the years has been slow to move from its traditional models and mores. On top of the software industry infrastructural problems, which conspire to stymie technical advances, SaaS probably represents a more significant technical and business revolution than we have experienced before; even more so than the change from monolithic mainframe applications to client/server in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Read the full article and the comments.
Posted by Atanas Entchev at 4/30/2010 2:40 PM 
Categories: Cloud, Opinion, Business, GIS, Software, GeoCloud, Online Mapping, SaaS, Technology, IT
Tags: Cloud Opinion Business GIS Software GeoCloud Online Mapping SaaS Technology IT
Categories: Cloud, Opinion, Business, GIS, Software, GeoCloud, Online Mapping, SaaS, Technology, IT
Tags: Cloud Opinion Business GIS Software GeoCloud Online Mapping SaaS Technology IT
"Small and nimble." Not how I would describe Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. It seems to me that it is those vendors with deep pockets that are doing it and that these folks have either underbid (by giving away the service) or consumed the small and nimble outfits.
I think in O'Doherty's article "small and nimble" refers to the GIS implementers, not to cloud infrastructure vendors such as Amazon. Microsoft and Google provide nice map foundations, but it will be small outfits like GeoJason (link below) who will make the map sandwich.
http://blog.entchev.com/2010/04/24/geojason-get-it--moving-from-arcgis-server-to-google-maps-api.aspx
I am still confused based on the quote in your post. Here is an example...
So when Bing maps (owned by old, large, incumbent Microsoft) serves up terabytes of Pictometry data (fairly new remote sensing vendor) so that someone who never had access to GIS technology before can create real estate mash-ups who is failing to innovate? Seems to me that cloud GIS hinges on some very well-established giants, and if they fail it is all over with for the "small and nimble." My point is that sweeping generalizations tend not to work very well when it comes to the cloud.
I agree with your point that sweeping generalizations tend not to work well. Not when it comes to the cloud, nor elsewhere.
Perhaps because of my bias as a municipal GIS implementer I saw something in O'Doherty's article that wasn't there. But what I saw through my possibly biased lens is this: If I am a municipal government, Microsoft of Google will not put my GIS in the cloud (although they will provide an essential foundation). Nor will a well-established GIS vendor put my GIS in the cloud. It will be a small and nimble third party that will overlay *my data* on top of Bing's foundation.