17 September 2010
It’s great to see that GIS as a Service is getting more recognition as technologies and use cases mature. The Location Intelligence GeoCloud 2010 executive conference in Washington DC next week is just one of the forums where the subject is being aired in the coming months.
This year’s the conferences will explore themes from Cloud-based Geospatial Applications and Software as a Service (SaaS) to Cloud-based business models and Return on Investment. I’ll be participating on the GeoCloud Vision Panel and presenting a keynote entitled “The Demise of the Desktop” – which I hope will generate some lively debate.
I truly believe SaaS is poised to be the dominant method for business software delivery in the coming years and GIS is no different. As I’ve said before SaaS has just too many advantages to offer customers and end-users for anyone to credibly argue against it. The advantages keep mounting from the pay-as-you-go cost structure and ease-of-use, to lower maintenance and support effort – which all add up to lower total cost of ownership. Consumer mapping applications have shown the way, not its time for fully-fledged GIS to take to the clouds.
Come and join in the debate in Washington next week.
Philip O’Doherty, CEO
