Why CARTO is bringing us new tools for location intelligence

August 10, 2016
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Following the recent news about a name change, the CARTO team answered a few questions on why they are making big updates to their geospatial solutions.

Q- What changed and why are you changing the name of the company?

A - Historically, CARTO has enabled an entire community of developers to build applications and perform analysis. Additionally, anyone could be making visualizations easily. But if you wanted to extract more value through analysis and filtering capabilities, users had to know how to write SQL or CSS code. The new product will simplify this process by introducing a new visual language, which doesn’t require coding skills to perform analysis or create widget based applications.

We believe CARTO represents a simpler name that is also more in line with our company’s mission: to democratize Location Intelligence for everyone.  When we started the company our first goal was to enable developers to create better geospatial applications. We have helped many organizations create better application experiences to make location data more accessible to final users.

Now, as we keep expanding our vision towards the democratization of Location Intelligence, we are looking at enabling Business Users and Data Analysts, and we believe that this new product and vision requires a brand name simplification, removing the DB part of it.

 

Q- Your new tagline is ‘Predict through Location’, what and how can you predict?

A - The power of location is that it underpins most of the world's data. That means, through simply knowing a coordinate, we can predict what layers of information belong with that coordinate. With a collection of coordinates, we can go further by taking the layers of information and predicting which coordinates are related or which coordinates are outliers. Finally, we can often use the time or place of your coordinates, plus the layers of information we can attach to them, and predict where or when else you should find more data like your existing data.

Think of CARTO prediction capabilities as a set of tools built into the system that allow you to see more and extract more value from your data. CARTO uses prediction to answer three groups of questions: (1) What else should I know about my location data? (2) How are the points within my location data related? (3) Where else might I find more location data like those I already know?

As the MTA weighs its options when repairing the Canarsie Tunnel — which may include a full closing of the L train during repairs, or a longer period with weekend-only closures — CARTO started digging into open data to shed some light on how disruptive the L train closure would be to the people living in Brooklyn, as well as how feasible different alternatives would be based on demographics and patterns.

 

Q- What’s changing in the market to make Location Intelligence important NOW?

A - Location Intelligence not only helps users react to the “big themes” of change, but also to understand and predict them better. Mobility of people, devices, and things requires not only awareness of location, but also an understanding of its impact (here vs. there) and the ability to predict movement. The reality is: the more digital we become, the more location matters.

Tech disruption is accelerating and forcing change for all players in their respective markets, especially traditionalists. Location Intelligence provides insights, so that business users can more swiftly react to industry changes and even predict the new wave of competitors to find potential advantages.

Organizations are always looking to monetize their data. Location data enhances the clarity, context, and predictability of this information, making it more valuable.

Customer expectations for personalization, on-demand services, and anticipating the next “need” requires relentless research, continuous engagement, and predictive insight. Location Intelligence offers a more complete and contextual view of customers - from their demographics, economics, lifestyle, and other location-centric factors.

The Internet of Things will require Location Intelligence to operationalize, manage, and optimize.

 

Q- What are CARTO Builder and CARTO Engine?

CARTO BUILDER

A web-based drag and drop analysis tool for analysts and business users to discover and predict key insights from location data, CARTO Builder unleashes the power of location intelligence with self-service, actionable dashboards you can share across your whole organization.

CARTO ENGINE

A one-stop set of geospatial tools, services, and APIs for discovering and predicting the key insights in your location data, CARTO Engine empowers your organization with scalable analysis and enrichment solutions that you can fully embed on your web and mobile apps. The CARTO Engine is a powerful stack of geospatial tools comprised of APIs, SDKs, Data Observatory, Location Data Services and High Performance Analytics.

 

Q -How will this be rolled out?

A - We’re planning to complete the roll out in progressive phases starting from the 7th of July. To join the early access program, new users can request to enter the program as of today. For existing users, we will enable CARTO builder progressively over the next weeks and existing content and data will remain always accessible. Existing users can of course apply to join the early access program as well.

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