A Clearer View of Intergraph’s GIS Product Roadmap

During the Hexagon 2012 conference in Las Vegas, it became clear that Intergraph’s GIS strategy is moving toward tightly integrated, workflow-driven solutions. Hexagon CEO Ola Rollén set the tone in his keynote by emphasizing increased investment in solutions designed around real operational workflows rather than isolated tools.

Spending a full day on the exhibit floor reviewing demonstrations of Intergraph’s GIS technologies revealed a product portfolio that has matured into a cohesive ecosystem. After more than a year of refinement, Intergraph is now showing meaningful integration across four key domains: raster, vector, video, and sensors. While longtime users of GeoMedia and IMAGINE are well acquainted with raster and vector workflows, the deep integration of video and sensor data is where Intergraph clearly differentiates itself.

Raster Data Management with ERDAS Apollo

One of the foundational components of this ecosystem is ERDAS Apollo, Intergraph’s raster imagery management and publishing platform. Apollo is designed to streamline the process of importing, cataloging, and distributing large image collections.

Administrators can define access controls at the project or user level, ensuring that teams work with the correct datasets while minimizing time spent searching for imagery. For organizations managing extensive image archives, Apollo significantly reduces administrative overhead and accelerates access to production-ready data.

Expanding GIS Access with GeoMedia Smart Client

Another highlight is GeoMedia Smart Client, a lightweight GIS interface built for users who need access to geospatial information but lack formal GIS training. Rather than overwhelming users with complex menus, Smart Client focuses on clarity and usability.

This approach makes it particularly well suited for organizations looking to extend GIS access beyond technical specialists. One standout feature is its intuitive print functionality, which allows users to easily select, rotate, and output map views without navigating cumbersome export dialogs.

Workflow Automation with Spatial Modeler

Intergraph’s Spatial Modeler represents a significant step toward reusable, automated geospatial workflows. Originally developed within the ERDAS product line, Spatial Modeler enables users to script conditional logic, chain processes together, and save workflows for repeated use.

The system supports batch processing and extensibility, allowing developers to create custom functions. While similar capabilities have existed in competing platforms for some time, Spatial Modeler’s strength lies in its ability to access GeoMedia functionality within the ERDAS environment. Future releases are expected to bring tighter integration directly into GeoMedia.

Integrating Full Motion Video with GIS

One of the most compelling demonstrations involved Intergraph’s integration of full motion video into a GIS context. Users can embed video streams directly into mapped polygons over static imagery, allowing video playback to follow flight paths or survey routes.

Analysts can annotate video content with scene-level metadata such as new construction, vegetation disturbance, or persons of interest. These annotations become searchable attributes, eliminating the need to manually rewatch footage. From there, users can extract still frames, generate maps, or embed video clips directly into presentations, creating a seamless path from analysis to reporting.

Sensor Integration as a Core Differentiator

Sensor integration remains one of Intergraph’s strongest competitive advantages. Drawing on decades of experience delivering E-911 and public safety systems, Intergraph has built robust capabilities for managing real-time sensor and alarm data within a geospatial framework.

Using the GeoMedia platform, Intergraph solutions visualize event locations, device states, and alarm conditions in real time. These systems are designed to meet the demanding requirements of security and emergency response environments, including high availability, redundancy, and distributed disaster recovery architectures.

By combining sensor feeds, alarms, video analytics, and GIS in a single platform, Intergraph offers system integrators a versatile, all-in-one solution—often described as a “Swiss army knife” for sensor-driven geospatial applications.

A More Unified GIS Vision

The product demonstrations at Hexagon 2012 showed that Intergraph is moving beyond individual tools toward a unified geospatial platform. By integrating raster imagery, vector data, video streams, and sensor networks into cohesive workflows, the company is aligning its technology with the complex, real-world operations of its users.

For organizations operating in defense, security, infrastructure, and emergency response, this convergence positions Intergraph as a provider of comprehensive, operationally focused GIS solutions rather than isolated mapping tools.

Disclosure: Travel to the Hexagon 2012 conference was supported by Hexagon.