I really get a kick out of the self provocative proclamation that the OpenGeo Team is "...faster and better than anyone else in the world..." at solving geospatial problems on the OpenGeo Team page.
I recommend a "geospatial" Academic Decathalon!
ERDAS has been solving "real world" National Mapping Agency geospatial workflows for decades now. ..so how are you 'faster' and or 'better' than the world class geospatial scientists, remote sensing scientist and developers that exist at ERDAS?
Should we measure this based on software revenue? Possibly an 'apples to apples' comparison of products and satisfied use cases? "Challenge" each team with a use case to satisfy (FULLY!!)? How about number of supported sensors and formats? Or what about a third party review of resumes?
Thats just a rediculous statement guys...
Showing posts with label geospatial philathropy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geospatial philathropy. Show all posts
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The Price of "FREE" Open Source Software has really become Expensive!!
I was looking at the OpenGeo Version Matrix and the price to "buy in" to the open source geospaital software has really become crazy! It appears the line between capitalist and geospatial philanthropist has really become blurred. It's more expensive to buy into open source than to purchase COTS software today!
$70,000 for 300 hours of service!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!
I run into so many clients that are "hamstrung" on open source solutions that are being funnelled into a bottomless money pit with open source. No doubt, the "hook" to allure people into the evaluation stage is there with the "free" pitch, but the REALITY of what it will take to really meet requirements smacks you in the face immediately.
The business model of "Try it...figure out what you really want...then pay me 70K" open source model is a bit crazy.
Always remember, you buy into it, YOU MAINTAIN it for the rest of your life. OUCH!
The market is begging for a vendor to pick up the ball here...luckily, ERDAS is HERE!
Give the "out of the box" SDI that works, has a WORLD CLASS development, support and product management team supporting the project with real world PRODUCTIZED features and evaluate the difference for yourself!
The ERDAS APOLLO!!!
Can somebody calculate an ROI for me immediately!
$70,000 for 300 hours of service!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!
I run into so many clients that are "hamstrung" on open source solutions that are being funnelled into a bottomless money pit with open source. No doubt, the "hook" to allure people into the evaluation stage is there with the "free" pitch, but the REALITY of what it will take to really meet requirements smacks you in the face immediately.
The business model of "Try it...figure out what you really want...then pay me 70K" open source model is a bit crazy.
Always remember, you buy into it, YOU MAINTAIN it for the rest of your life. OUCH!
The market is begging for a vendor to pick up the ball here...luckily, ERDAS is HERE!
Give the "out of the box" SDI that works, has a WORLD CLASS development, support and product management team supporting the project with real world PRODUCTIZED features and evaluate the difference for yourself!
The ERDAS APOLLO!!!
Can somebody calculate an ROI for me immediately!
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
ESRI vs. OGC Community
ESRI is really pushing hard on proliferating their own PROPRIETARY services with their 9.3.x Server offering and recommending this over standards based interoperable web services to the GIS community "at large".
I am also PUBLICLY stating that thier support for the OGC services (especially CONSUMING them in their clients) is VERY WEAK functionally as a feature set and the performance is very, very poor. The ERDAS APOLLO Image Manager Web Client is such a better user experience and faster at consuming OGC services than ArcMap!!
Lets put ourselves in their shoe's and dwell on why this would be??
ESRI currently holds the largest marketshare in the GIS domain. They have every intention to keep that marketshare. To the market leader, making the OGC services actually work equivelently to thier proprietary services does have the possibility of marginalizing and commodotizing feature sets in the GIS market leaving "opportunity" to those who are supporting the interoperable services. Forcing the customer to "have" to use proprietary services and SDK's to meet thier use case is also in ESRI's interest as it requires vendor lock-in on the server and client side. It's quite easy to say that the OGC services aren't "rich" enough to provide the use cases that clients need when thier only experience with it is extremely limited and the performance is very slow (as experienced in thier software today). They also have no interest in a "governing" body controlling technology decisions and/or application profiles on the technical side.
OGC Services on the other hand need to provide the user experience and the PERFORMANCE that proprietary services do. In my opinion, this can only be provided by the geospatial vendors. The open-source project don't have the wealth of domain experience, existing codebase and market experience to do this. They of course will provide a user experience, but at a very poor performance.
Entre...VENDORS SUPPORTING THE STANDARDS AND DOING IT RIGHT! ERDAS has really supported the OGC standards in an extremely MEANINGUL and HIGH PERFORMANCE manner. We are CITE certified OGC services and provide "under the hood" the depth and richness of format support, sensor model support, workflow and an out of the box end user experience in a single product that is expected of a commercial vendor.
If you really want to see the OGC services FLY on TERRABYTES worth of heterogenous data with real world use cases...the APOLLO Enterprise Suite is what your looking for.
I am also PUBLICLY stating that thier support for the OGC services (especially CONSUMING them in their clients) is VERY WEAK functionally as a feature set and the performance is very, very poor. The ERDAS APOLLO Image Manager Web Client is such a better user experience and faster at consuming OGC services than ArcMap!!
Lets put ourselves in their shoe's and dwell on why this would be??
ESRI currently holds the largest marketshare in the GIS domain. They have every intention to keep that marketshare. To the market leader, making the OGC services actually work equivelently to thier proprietary services does have the possibility of marginalizing and commodotizing feature sets in the GIS market leaving "opportunity" to those who are supporting the interoperable services. Forcing the customer to "have" to use proprietary services and SDK's to meet thier use case is also in ESRI's interest as it requires vendor lock-in on the server and client side. It's quite easy to say that the OGC services aren't "rich" enough to provide the use cases that clients need when thier only experience with it is extremely limited and the performance is very slow (as experienced in thier software today). They also have no interest in a "governing" body controlling technology decisions and/or application profiles on the technical side.
OGC Services on the other hand need to provide the user experience and the PERFORMANCE that proprietary services do. In my opinion, this can only be provided by the geospatial vendors. The open-source project don't have the wealth of domain experience, existing codebase and market experience to do this. They of course will provide a user experience, but at a very poor performance.
Entre...VENDORS SUPPORTING THE STANDARDS AND DOING IT RIGHT! ERDAS has really supported the OGC standards in an extremely MEANINGUL and HIGH PERFORMANCE manner. We are CITE certified OGC services and provide "under the hood" the depth and richness of format support, sensor model support, workflow and an out of the box end user experience in a single product that is expected of a commercial vendor.
If you really want to see the OGC services FLY on TERRABYTES worth of heterogenous data with real world use cases...the APOLLO Enterprise Suite is what your looking for.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The ESRI Geodatabase Proprietary cluster
I usually don't complain in general, but this time I've had it up to my eyeballs with the inability to work with the ESRI geodatabase without using their proprietary SDK's. I've developed with ArcObjects for over a decade now so it's not a matter of "complexity", it's simply an issue of total lack of interoperability!
The "marketecture" on thier website speaks of interoperability and IT standards yet they don't allow anybody to access the data that they store in their PROPRIETARY storage format...say one thing, do another.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the FEATURES of the geodatabase, but I've had it with having to use ArcObjects to work with what should simply be free flowing GI.
So there is supposed to be a published specification for the "file" geodatabase in the 9.4 release. Great...but what about the DB persisted "enterprise" geodatabase? It must only be "simple" feature specification as all the behavior of objects is in the application tier?? I'm looking forward to implementing the real "simple feature specification" on top of whatever specification they provide....ughhh.
The "marketecture" should read, "We are totally interoperable...with ourselves only"!!!! (note the very small typeset caveat disclaimer said that under my breath reality check).
The "marketecture" on thier website speaks of interoperability and IT standards yet they don't allow anybody to access the data that they store in their PROPRIETARY storage format...say one thing, do another.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the FEATURES of the geodatabase, but I've had it with having to use ArcObjects to work with what should simply be free flowing GI.
So there is supposed to be a published specification for the "file" geodatabase in the 9.4 release. Great...but what about the DB persisted "enterprise" geodatabase? It must only be "simple" feature specification as all the behavior of objects is in the application tier?? I'm looking forward to implementing the real "simple feature specification" on top of whatever specification they provide....ughhh.
The "marketecture" should read, "We are totally interoperable...with ourselves only"!!!! (note the very small typeset caveat disclaimer said that under my breath reality check).
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