Voyager Search Launches Open Data Network With Searchable Geospatial Catalog of Global Content
Fueled by customer demand and a demonstrated need within the enterprise search industry, company releases its most ambitious product yet
REDLANDS, CA – JUNE 26, 2017 –Voyager Search™, a global leader in enterprise search specializing in geospatial data and content, unveiled VoyagerODN™ today, a single point of search for publicly available data. VoyagerODN makes the most of Voyager Search’s core software capabilities by providing public access to millions of free, geospatial pieces of content. Companies, entrepreneurs, analysts, nonprofits, government agencies, hobbyists, and more who need free location-based data can use VoyagerODN to find content by place name, keyword, or browsing content collections.
Map-based projects often rely upon national or international data sets that are scattered throughout the web. VoyagerODN works in much the same way as Kayak.com provides a single point of search for airfares. Consumers save time by not having to visit each airline site to find the best flights. Now, with VoyagerODN, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) users have a streamlined way to find what they need without hunting for it.
Understanding the Problem
The site www.worldwidewebsize.comestimates that the Web is comprised of 4.46 billion pages, but specialized content like GIS data housed on these pages are not easily discoverable with a simple Google or Bing search. Finding geospatial content has required knowing where to look, and who to ask. And when content cannot be found, users end up recreating it themselves, purchasing a substitute, or giving up their search altogether. The wasted time, missed opportunities, and errors in decision-making are occurring on an epic scale.
The hundreds of portals or FTP sites set up to share an organization’s important spatial content has created an ecosystem of repositories as varied and dense as the plants in a rainforest. ODN aims to provide a unified search across all geospatial content so users can access the data, web services, and content they need quickly — and get on with their work.
The VoyagerODN Solution
Voyager Search decided to address this need when customer after customer said the same thing: give us a quick, painless way to research and access the public geospatial data available alongside our own. VoyagerODN is leveraging the Voyager™ software platform, a culmination of a year of work curating and collecting source content.
“I have been using VoyagerODN to search for geospatial data and the more I use it, the more possibilities I discover,” said Aurelie Shapiro, Satellite Remote Sensing Specialist at World Wildlife Fund for Nature(WWF) Germany. “It's easy to use, intuitive, and I like that it integrates so well with Esri’s ArcGIS Online, allowing others to find our data as well.”
The world’s leading conservation organization, WWF works in 100 countries and is supported by more than one million members in the United States, and close to five million globally. WWF's unique way of working combines global reach with a foundation in science, involves action at every level from local to global, and ensures the delivery of innovative solutions that meet the needs of both people and nature.
“I can see how other organizations would find this equally beneficial,” Shapiro continued. “In my first search, I came across a really interesting dataset on climate scenarios that led me to even more data that I simply would have not found otherwise. It’s good to know there’s a company out there like Voyager Search that values simple access to spatial data as much as I do.”
“We’d been thinking about building something like VoyagerODN for a long time,” said Voyager Search’s founder and CEO, Brian Goldin. “We have incredibly loyal, passionate customers who rely on our Voyager software to make their data discoverable. It’s those same dedicated users, along with others within our industry, that have been asking us to create a solution to bridge the gap between publicly available data and actually locating — and using — that data. With VoyagerODN, I believe we’ve now provided them with that missing piece they were looking for.”
How to Get It
VoyagerODNis available now on the Voyager Search websiteand embedded in Voyager version 1.9.9 for free, as well as with every new purchase of the Voyager software, ensuring all users’ content can be searched simultaneously with publicly available content.
About Voyager Search
Voyager Search is a leading global provider of geospatial, enterprise search solutions that enable a single point of search across all of your content repositories. With Voyager software, users can search, find, and deliver more than 2,000 types of content. Built on top of Solr/Lucene, the world’s premier open source solution, Voyager’s simple user interface,Navigo, offers Fortune 500 businesses, government entities, and multinational organizations easy-to-use search, data management, document delivery, and map visualization capabilities – including Natural Language Processing. With no custom code required, Voyager is a true off-the-shelf geospatial intelligence and search powerhouse that supports customers in a variety of industries, including defense, oil and gas, federal and state governments, and mining. Formed in 2008, the company is headquartered in Redlands, California, with additional staff in Washington State, Washington, DC, Vancouver Island, BC, Europe, and Uruguay. For more information, visitwww.voyagersearch.comor follow the company onTwitter,LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.