“The need for citizen self-services and increased transparency, combined with reduction around costs and inefficiency are driving wider mainstream adoption of location-based data, and fuelling the appetite for geospatial data on-demand in the UK public sector, according to Pitney Bowes Business Insight, the leading global provider of location intelligence, data management and customer communication management solutions.”

DaaS – Public Sector Driving Data On Demand

Chris M

New PBBI Whitepaper Available Now!

PBBI is pleased to provide a new whitepaper on considerations for Public Sector organisations in relation to Location Aware CRM and Cloud Computing:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been a staple of the public sector for many years and to varying degrees of success. Today public sector organisations are increasingly being exposed to the potential of location aware CRM systems in delivering critical public services. This evolutionary development comes as a new dawn rises in the form of Cloud Computing bringing with it exciting opportunities to better connect with citizens and realise previously unattainable operational and cost efficiencies. That said, not all clouds contain a silver lining. At a time when public sector organisations face stringent cutbacks, for many, uncertainty and apprehension are the watchwords.

This white paper discusses the key issues for public sector organisations to consider as location aware CRM becomes a reality and the drive to cloud-based computing models gains momentum.

Download the paper now here: Location Aware CRM & Cloud Comuting Whitepaper

If you want to read some of out other whitepapers, don’t forget you can find lots more here: PBBI Whitepapers

Chris M

Data restrictions become a little cloudy

Forrester provide a good interactive map (of course) detailing countries with the most restrictive legislation, through to those countries that have very minimal or no legislation. While it’s probably not surprising that Germany and Switzerland had the most restrictive laws, I for one, was surprised to see Argentina up there. Meanwhile countries such as the US and Australia have only minimal restrictions – although the US is one of many countries to have a warning on government surveillance. It certainly make for some interesting reading, and I know from PBBI’s perspective that we have been very careful when selecting data centres around the world that we would comply with data restrictions, and provide adequate information and security on where and where not that data goes.

I hope that this is just part of the evolutionary process of cloud computing and that one day we will be able to put data securely where it should best live (on or off premise – around the globe), but more realistically while warnings exist about government surveillance on data, we probably don’t all trust each other enough on that for a long time to come. So until then as Forrester and others point out, SaaS vendors will have to accommodate local concerns and legislation to succeed.

Chris M

Portrait Software to be part of PBBI

A small peice of news from PBBI, we are set to purchase Portrait Software here in the UK.

Pitney Bowes Chairman, President and CEO Murray Martin commented: “We are delighted to have reached agreement with the Board of Portrait Software on this recommended transaction.

The acquisition of Portrait Software will expand our platform offering in customer relationship management technology and further enhance our range of integrated solutions we provide to our customers.”

Portrait Software offers a suite of software applications that help companies increase their level of engagement with their customers.

These applications help companies design and execute more effective customer service and marketing campaigns based on superior insight into customer behaviour. By applying these software tools, companies can see greater return on investment for their marketing dollars.

For more information on Portrait, please go to www.portraitsoftware.com

We’ll bring more news on this as it comes,

Chris M

A good use case for this would be embedding 3D artist impressions for public consultation on regeneration projects. Imagine the following video of the Aquatic Centre in Stratford, East London -- embedded onto a map of the area. Other business data around the development framework would really help to build a picture of the area.

Sure the mashing together of maps and youtube isn’t exactly that new an idea. But I haven’t seen too many tools that enable you to do it quickly and easily, but also bring this together whilst having control over the look and feel of your business layers and the context in which it is presented. Are we seeing the convergence of the traditional power of Location Intelligence with the great visualisation media of the modern web.

Mark

I managed to catch up with Stuart and Scott from Southwark and ask them about the great work they have been doing with Stratus.

The London Data Store

The XML Feed in Firefox

Final Live Feed On Southwark's Site

Hi Scott and Stuart, can you just introduce yourself and your role at Southwark?
SC: Hello, my name is Stuart Carter and I’m Southwark’s Corporate GIS manager
SD: Hello, my name is Scott Day and I’m Southwark’s Corporate GIS officer

What gave you the idea for the integration between MapInfo Stratus and the TFL xml camera feed?
SC: I was introduced to the London Datastore (http://data.london.gov.uk/) at a recent GLA GI forum meeting. It’s a GLA managed web portal allowing London’s public organisations to upload and download spatial data. But importantly London Datastore also provides links to spatial data feeds already uploaded to the data cloud. Data providers include London boroughs, ONS, GLA, TfL and British Transport Police.

I came across TfL’s traffic camera feed service holding spatial coordinates within the XML code. There was clearly an opportunity to link up to TfL’s data cloud data bringing the data feed into our own Stratus service.

The days of only providing spatial data held by and managed by the council have ended. The concept of open data is very important in our spatial data infrastructure (SDI) plans; moreover, it fits in nicely with the council’s overall web strategy.

SD: On top of what Stuart has already mentioned, the GIS team has a good working relationship with the CCTV camera operatives in Southwark, however until recently we have not had the tools available to integrate live CCTV feeds into the maps that they use (without a lot of specialist bespoke development). We are still a long way from fully integration live CCTV feeds into the maps that the CCTV operators use, but the data from the London Datastore is a good indication that the technology is now available (without specialist bespoke development).

How long did this integration take to set-up?
SD: Once we had a raw XML file from an RSS feed (downloaded from the London Datastore), the creation of the map was very quick (little over an hour). With the map created we could link directly to the source feed from the TFL website (all the relevant information was contained within the single RSS feed).

What level of technical understanding is needed to set this up?
SD: The main technical knowledge that is needed to do this is: A basic understanding of XML and HTML.
As far as I know MapInfo Pro cannot read an XML file without some extra work, so the route I took was to simply convert the XML into a CSV file. Once the data was in a CSV file the map could be drawn using geo:easting and geo:northing from the RSS feed. One really good feature of MapInfo stratus is that to display information into a call out bubble it needs to convert the r MapInfo attributes into HTML. So if you have HTML in your MapInfo layer MapInfo stratus will simply translate that code into whatever the HTML tells it to. When we first got MapInfo stratus I enjoyed showing potential users that the call out bubble could display anything they wanted – even a Google search engine!

Were there any challenges that you faced?
SC: I needed to check on the legality of the mash-up. But after contacting TfL directly and reviewing their small print it became clear that we could proceed.

SD: The most difficult part of the implementation was to get the XML data into MapInfo Pro. There are many tools and techniques to do this, some easier and quicker than others. As I’m not an expert in XML I chose to convert the file into CSV which I’m more comfortable with.

Do you have any future plans to enhance this mashup, or add additional feeds to Stratus?
SC: There are other spatial datasets on London Datastore that are of interest, especially those of demographic and social nature. Ultimately, we’ll move forward with cloud data mash-ups where there is a strong user relevance and system compatibility. A

We’re also looking into bringing re-rendered Open Street Map (OSM) mapping into Stratus Connect. Initially it would be direct data supply but it’ll evolve into a WMS feed bringing OSM mapping direct from the cloud.

SD: To go with the TFL traffic cams it would be great to link to other live webcams (e.g. http://www.camvista.com/england/london/trafalgarsquare_streaming.php). I’ve already toyed with integrating live video feeds from a number of tourist webcams. Although technically possible, we’d need to first check with the camera owners before we take this one further.

Additional information on general Connect enhancements
The following is not actually related to the TFL traffic cams mashup but is still a very exciting future development. We now have a prototype integration into our CMS which will soon allow small map widgets to be embedded throughout the council’s website. The page owner would utilise the widget without any technical GI knowledge.

In addition to this our maps could also be embedded into external websites. Moreover, at some point in the future we will have a wizard allowing anyone to generate a map widget for their own website. A demo of this can be seen using the following HTML…

<iframe width=”480″ height=”300″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” marginheight=”0″ marginwidth=”0″ src=”http://maps.southwark.gov.uk/connect/embedded_s.jsp?mapcfg=simple&mylayer0=TFL_traffic_CCTV&x=532037&y=178892&z=11″></iframe>

—————————————-

Many thanks to Stuart and Scott for taking the time to talk through their implementation, I’m sure you will agree their web mapping is is looking fantastic! Its also providing a great service to the citizens of Southwark. If there are other organisations would like to feature their work on the blog please get in touch.

Mark

The first day of British Summer - One big Stratus Cloud!

The trouble with the Internet is that when something gets put up, it tends to stay – for a long time. And when you put something up – which in context can be valid – it lingers around for people to use years later. So perhaps when Bill Gates stated in the early 80’s that “640K (memory) ought to be enough for anybody”, it’s come back to haunt him a touch – a statement he now claims he never made, but thanks to the Internet it’s always going to be attached to him, true or not. By 1993 Bill (allegedly) gave us another corker “the Internet? We are not interested in it”. How times have changed. As I was doing some research this week I came across this interview published on ZDNet. Harry Debes, of Lawson software didn’t look like he was having much time for SaaS, with the article heading “SaaS industry will collapse in two years”. Then I checked out that Harry made these claims back in August 2008. So come the end of August this year it looks like these words will come back to haunt, although i would guess by now he has adapted his business and won’t be losing so much sleep over it. In the article some very good and valid points are made. SaaS or Cloud computing are newer terms, but we’ve seen the principals time and time before. Two years on from these claims, SaaS seems very much alive. Let’s take a second to look at a few recent figures:

• Gartner 2009 – SaaS industry accounts for $8Billion (USD) per annum
• Gartner 2009 – SaaS growth rates are approximately 22% worldwide
• IDC  2009 – 76% of US organisation use SaaS applications in business
• May 2010 – IBM Acquire Stirling Commerce for $1.4 Billion to grow it’s cloud based integration business (only weeks after acquiring Cast Iron Systems)
• May 2010 – Accenture buys CadenceQuest (SaaS) in a bid to boost its Interactive digital marketing portfolio

Gartner Emerging Technology Hype Cycle 2009 - Cloud Computing heading for the peak - and then trough?

A quick snapshot of recent headlines shows us that not only is SaaS growing (22% could be considered modest from a low base – but in these economic times?), but the larger classic vendors are adjusting their strategies and acquiring organisations to integrate and solidify their SaaS strategies for future growth. It would look somewhat as if organisations such as IBM have firstly identified that SaaS isn’t going to be dead in two years, and secondly after the economic woes, they are picking out the best survivors to help them achieve their visions and goals for SaaS revenue projections over the next five to ten years.

Recently you may have heard Mike Hickey (PBBI’s President) talking to Directions Magazine around how we are altering our investment to prepare for life in the cloud. This is in no small part seen by MapInfo Stratus, delivering location intelligence in the cloud. As I’ve stated before, what life in “the cloud” will really look like is still being defined, and I would predict for some time to come a mixture of data and software on and off premise. What is perhaps driving this most is something which wasn’t so visible a couple of years back. Crippling levels of debt, both at an organisation and government level has led to companies needing to cut back on cost. When PBBI put out a paper a couple of months back on the seven must haves of SaaS, i said that while we could consider them equally, the fact is that one is way more equal than the others – Cost Savings. Yes of course people expect the user experience, functionality, security and so on. But if it saves money, that will be the driving factor. I speak to many organisations all over the world, and as IT directors are establishing strategies for the coming five years in the face of increasing cuts, this is what will push SaaS in all areas of IT up the agenda.

But it’s not all about cost. What else has happened in the past couple of years that means SaaS hasn’t died (although a lot could happen before August!). Well I would suggest that in many areas of the world we are experiencing four things actually coming together to make it viable:

• Software - Arguably the software was more than capable a couple of years ago, but modern software architecture (web services) and Web 2.0 (apologies for the term) designed for use over the web make the software much more viable. In a GIS world the emergence of technologies such as tile servers helps decrease the data sizes coming and going across the pipes meaning we no longer have time to make a cup of tea before that image refreshes.
• Hardware - The cost of computing hardware continues to decline whilst processor power continues to go up. But from an organisations perspective, it’s not just the purchase of the kit, but the management and maintenance of them which sends the annual operating cost well into the $1000’s. But the emergence of server farms taking care of back ups, and fail over  makes this “hidden” cost of buying software a key asset.
• Infrastructure - In my opinion the biggy. Each year we see more and more locations around the world not just connected to the internet, but connected with speeds acceptable for everyday working. While South Korea leads the way globally with speeds of up to 1000Mb/s,  a growing number of nations are seeing broadband infrastructure increase. With government schemes ensuring all areas are accesible and telco operators investing in things like fibre to home, this again is something which will only get better. One addition to this will be mobile, whereby both handset advancements and software will combine with 3G and 4G networks to make mobile the way we consume the web.
• Market conditions – And the final ingrediant to the melting pot is market conditions. Two years ago businesses may have raised an eyebrow at SaaS, with a wait and see approach. Today after a severe recession and the prospect of a long road to full recovery more and more businesses are open to new appraoches, in particular those that bring cost savings.

As we look at things like Gartner hype cycles and new and emerging trends it is often difficult to predict what will live and what will die. In technology terms things like the netbooks are already stated to be “dead” because there is some new fad around tablet devices. Who wants a Macbook air now I can have £600 ebook reader? Either way the past couple of years have shown that this time SaaS is here to stay (probably) but it has taken a unique set of conditions to make that happen. Equally just as five years ago many predicted that desktop sofware would be gone by now and everything browser based hasn’t happened, so this time we’ll live with a mix of on and off premise applications and data. Spatially and non spatially we continue to see a rise in the amount of data being collated, processed and stored. I believe this is magnified in the spatial world as we collect more elevation data, more imagery and so on, so it makes sense to be storing this in big central units, even better, consuming as much of this as possible direct from the source.

Like a good British Summer – the clouds are here to stay.

Chris M

Note – Should the entire SaaS market collapse before August, this article will be removed and you will forget ever reading it.

In need of Inspiration? Talk to our team in Germany!

Recently PBBI’s Sales Manager for the Central European Region, Michael Arthen,  gave an interview for GIS.Business magazine on INSPIRE and how PBBI is addressing the needs of our customers. The full interview can now be found over on our German regional PBBI website.

You can find a link to the article by clicking here

The article is written in German, so could be time to crack open the dictionary if, like me, your language skills are restricted to a a trip to the “Bahnhof”.

Chris M

Nearly 300 delegates attended the Insights Conference in Miami. The event had 3 forums including a stream dedicated to Location intelligence. In total there were over 110 sessions! From a MapInfo Stratus perspective we had quite a lot of coverage and generated quite a buzz at the conference. Conference microsite.

In terms of content, Jon Winslow Global Portfolio Director, Location Intelligence kicked things off by talking about why he loves Location Intelligence (and Stratus!). He provided some great examples that highlighted the value of spatial analysis, before moving on to talk about the vision and strategy for the portfolio. You can watch the session here

Why I love Location Intelligence and What I am Going to Do About It - Jon Winslow, Global Portfolio Director, Location Intelligence, PBBI

On day one we then ran two sessions on Stratus – an introductory session on MapInfo Stratus and a session on the RIA controls. In the first session we had a guest appearance from Jay Abrams from Pepperidge Farm. He is using MapInfo Stratus to effectively serve out spatial data to a wide user base. He did a great job explaining the benefits of web-based mapping and how there is a great return on investment, leading to better decision making. We had around 70 delegates in the session and there was a great set of questions from the floor. Also a full press report can be found here.

The MapInfo Stratus RIA Control session, was designed to position the capabilities of the controls to a non-technical audience. It used several examples to explain how the controls could be wired together to build small business applications. One example used was Colchester’s excellent “Find your Constituency” page, which allows the public to check their constituency online – thanks Tim for providing the details.

colchester.gov.uk - "Find your constituency" RIA Controls

On the Thursday our Kasper Saunders Bang from our Danish Partner Cowi presented a well attended session titled: E-Gov in Denmark – from Desktop to The Cloud. He presented an overview of the market including the position on INSPIRE, following up with some great examples of how to bring together various sources of data in the Cloud.

Also on the final morning a thanks to Justin Wilson from Dicks Sporting Goods, who are currently considering MapInfo Stratus for an internal tool. The presentation looked at how spatial data is critical for monitoring store performance and also analysis store locations.

Other mentions around the conference were the announcement of the launch of our DaaS (Data as a Service) offering. This offers an industry defining change in the way in which users consume and use spatial data. Press release. Also there were a couple of great sessions on Crime Profiler, which is now being used in some of the biggest police organisations out there.

It was a great conference and with many new announcements. There was a real sense that PBBI has a clear vision and strategy and is leading the next wave of technology in Location Intelligence. Finally, a big thank you to Iceland for allowing me an extra day in Miami. I guess that’s cloud computing for you!

Mark

I&DEA case study on London Borough of Southwark

As some of our regular readers will know, the London Borough of Southwark launched Stratus to the public a few months ago. They are continuing to enhance and develop their use of it, with some pretty cool uses coming soon which we’ve had a little sneak preview of. I thought I’d share with you a case study that was recently posted on the I&DEA website as the result of some interviews they conducted with Southwark.

Entitled “Spatially-enabled services in Southwark” the article covers:

• Key learnings for other councils
• Who was involved
• Problems, and how they were tackled
• Outcomes and Impacts
• Next steps for Southwark and mapping

The article is pretty comprehensive and I’m sure the GIS manager will welcome any questions you have on how they have gone about tackling their spatial problems and implementing Stratus.

Click here for the I&DEA article

One of the things which they have also done is enable live traffic cam feeds into the call outs as shown below. At the risk of being sent to the “punitentiary”, now there is a good idea*…

Live webcam links into Stratus! - to view feeds, turn on CCTV layer and select a point!

Chris M

* Pun also provided by the London Borough of Southwark!