Your open letter raises some excellent points. From a large end user organisation (of both data and technology, although we also produce data ourselves) I feel the discussion is important enough to go beyond software or data companies to include end users and even other industries. We all need to come off the fence.
Implications of disruptive forces like Google on the geospatial industry are still unknown, but most discussion is still too inward-looking for my liking. There is also a lot of confusion, perhaps due to increasingly blurred boundaries between consumers and professionals, or the fact that we - the perfectionist, classically trained geospatial professionals - are still blinded by the technology.
Google is not replacing traditional software vendors but drastically expanding the geospatial market. If geospatial professionals keep asking when will Google Earth have GIS analysis functionality, it is no wonder that we do not crack those new market segments. It is like asking your car dealer for a model with vertical take-off ability. But 99.999% of people on the street don’t need a car that can fly, although admittedly it would be cool if 100% had one.
The disruptive events of this year are a golden opportunity to take a ride on their marketing wave and be a force for innovation and quality control for all industries, grounded on the expertise foundation unique to ours. Geospatial software vendors can still be a force of innovation just like learnings from Space Shuttle missions find application way beyond the aerospace industry. But they will need to move with new expectations or be left behind.
What strikes me most is that software vendors will have to revise their cost models. If you use less than 50% of their functionality then their licence fees are probably overpriced. The pressure of recent disruptive events will hopefully force vendors to adopt more flexible business models. Downward cost pressure, with rising user expectations, might also kill off some of the perfectionism that prevents the traditional community from embracing new markets. Who cares if some maps have not got a north arrow? It completely depends on the application, sometimes it’s critical, often it’s not.
Ultimately we may live in a world where geospatial prices are dictated by market expectations and sentiments rather than actual production costs, as is the case for - let me use the most prominent example from my industry - oil. There is still time for the traditional geospatial community to adjust because, let’s face it, there is no point in spatially enabling business systems that in itself are still either immature or implemented in too many different ways. You cannot link eg. GIS with SAP until both GIS and SAP are cleaned up and equally standardised across the enterprise. And in most companies you will find that that is still work in progress. But the clock is ticking, and perhaps we need to become less technology and more business focused or we might miss the boat.
Thierry Gregorius
Shell (views expressed are personal)
