Location, location, location

Yesterday`s municipal elections spawned reams of raw data - and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is relying on 3D spatial technology to aid it in distilling the facts into useful information.

The IEC selected MapInfo Professional as its desktop product and MapInfo MapXtreme for Web applications, running atop its Oracle 8i platform.

ITWeb spoke to Michael Marvin, chairman of the board and co-founder of MapInfo, and Allan Ellis, founding partner of Spatial Technologies, local distributor of the product.

Headquartered in New York, MapInfo was founded in 1986 and listed in 1994. The company employs more than 600 employees worldwide, with subsidiaries in Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan and Australia. It has a global network of channel partners, and distribution relationships in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. One such value-added reseller is Rivonia-based Spatial Technologies.

Marvin explains the driver behind MapInfo products. "The GIS [geographical information systems] industry is really a take-off on the CAD industry, and CAD was digitising of any kind. With GIS, the need was for specific types of maps. We didn`t start that way - we started with databases, and the visualisation of data. As we evolved that, we became part of the GIS industry, but of course we were mavericks in the field."

"Four college kids", and Marvin himself started MapInfo`s core business. What began as a campus project, he says, has grown into a worldwide business spanning 56 countries and 21 languages.

The key to this growth is MapInfo`s partnerships, Marvin explains. "We have strong vendor relationships with companies such as Oracle, Informix and IBM. I think we have 10 to 12 significant initiatives ongoing with Oracle, around the world. A lot of it involves corporate R&D work, and embedding our spatial interface into their technology."

"The IEC is a very large, high profile client of ours," comments Ellis. The functionality enabled by MapInfo technology allowed voters to pin down their polling stations on www.elections.org.za. It also served the electoral offices during the voter registration period. As Ellis explains, all electoral offices were able to position their outlets and polling stations, make modifications to their boundaries, and more.

In addition to the IEC, Spatial Technologies services several other major local companies. FNB, Standard Bank, ABSA, MTN, Vodacom, Siemens, Alcatel and Motorola are a few of the "leading-edge technology players" which make use of MapInfo.

To use a gold rush analogy, we`re not digging for the gold - we`re going to sell the shovels.

Michael Marvin, co-founder, MapInfo

Marvin notes the telecommunications industry is "a big market opportunity".

"The retail markets also pose opportunity, and we do a lot of work in the public sector. The applications in health services, police services and social welfare are there - anywhere location is important. These are non-traditional users. These aren`t people with degrees in Geography - these are people who are experts in their fields, who need to use location to do their job, and these are the people we are most interested in serving."

Ellis notes: "The KwaZulu-Natal government is interested in the product, and certainly at a national level in Pretoria, there`s been quite a bit of interest displayed."

The next trend is predictably, wireless. Marvin says: "We see that as a way in which we can help our customers who provide commerce capability over wireless devices, particularly mobile wireless devices. We`ve been building a lot of the components, and now it remains just to add on the components to the relevant technologies."

"To use a gold rush analogy, we`re not digging for the gold - we`re going to sell the shovels."