I suspect that someday we will reflect on November 3, 1998 as a turning point for the business geographics industry. For a long time prior to that day, we perceived ourselves in a niche industry wondering when we might draw the attention of larger, more formidable software types. Well the big kid down the block is coming into the sandbox and life probably won’t be the same after the entrance of MapPoint 2000.

For those us who have championed the value of spatial business logic, we had long wondered when some company like MicroSoft or Oracle would validate our thinking and enter the fray. Sure, companies like these two software titans had dabbled with mapping (mapping was extension to Excel and spatial constructs are being released with Oracle), but it hasn’t seemed like any big timer made a commitment until Microsoft’s announcement. Somehow, there is now an inevitability of change, not just consolidation, that is in the works.

I spoke to key executives within one of the two key software firms in the desktop mapping arena and inquired what their reaction to the Microsoft announcement was. The response (I’ve taken liberties with the wording): “Well, we see it creating one of two realities – either we’ll all benefit from MS growing the market or we will perish as they spill into our space.” Personally, I subscribe to much of that reaction … I think that bit players, particularly those with special componentry or specialty databases will thrive. However, I suspect that those whose products aren’t in sharp contrast to the coming Microsoft line will be seriously challenged. For example, companies like Blue Marble could be in for a whale of a growth curve while companies like MapLinx or Maptitude could be in for a struggle without strategic adjustments.

I submit that the net effect is that “our waters will rise.” I’ve long maintained that the business geographics industry is constrained by higher priced products that have an aura of being more difficult to use. We need to present the common PC user with a simpler path into geographic technology. We need to simplify the transition into geography thought. Finding the technology at low prices on such a standard measure of technical usefulness as the MS-Office Suite will be boom for advancing the geographic paradigm.

Microsoft’s announcement is also key in that it provides us, as an industry, with more serious press coverage. Industry news has long been buried in American Demographics, Business Geographics and other narrowly focused print. Look in the past editions of mainstream technology missals like ComputerWorld or PC World, though, and you could strain yourself to find so much as a smidgeon of GIS-speak. Hopefully, with a more powerful flagship, coverage of “business geography” will grow.

The users our industry serves should be the biggest winners. They will likely see better products in a more competitive marketplace that will reflect more focused, better capitalized business plans. Better integration of data and software, spreadsheets and maps, more wizards, better help, more connectivity into multimedia all seem inevitable. And at prices that should halt the sticker shock.

For the industry and its users alike, the dynamics are in our waters. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually we will definitely see an impact that affects us all. Some dynamics will be subtle and some not so subtle. But a year or two down the line, I suspect that we will look back upon November 3rd as a day the waters rose.