GIS and Business Intelligence for the Enterprise Tuesday

notes from an Atlanta sales presentation,
GIS and Business Intelligence for the Enterprise (link)
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

In front of me sits a Georgia Power couple, late 30's, from the Distribution Management Systems group. They are exchanging business cards with a woman from an Atlanta engineering firm. I am the youngest and, with my laptop and glowing Treo 600, probably the most visibly wired member of this 45 person audience. We have all assembled in an Atlanta Marriott conference room to hear Information Builders and ESRI tout the benefits of Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Information Builders

Founded 1977, privately owned
Over $300 million annual revenue
HQ in NYC, 60 offices worldwide, 1,800 employees
Dedicated Atlanta rep just for Bellsouth and Cingular Wireless GIS

ESRI

In the GIS business since 1969, privately owned, zero debt
Averaging 20% annual growth over last few years
2003 revenue of $490 million

What is GIS?

Organizes information by location.
Map-based models of reality. But.... maps are static, while "GIS is a dynamic, interactive database of information for analytical processing and modeling."
Web version - "It's like a MapQuest, with your own data underneath it."

Demos at http://ibigis.ibi.com/

"We look at a map, we select features from the map and drop it into our report."

*Check out MapObjects Light on the ESRI website. $500 cost for developer edition, zero cost for deployment.

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