Keynote presentation given to the Nebraska GIS-LIS 2013 Annual Conference. Covers geospatial technology changes and trends.

1. NEBRASKA GIS-LIS SYMPOSIUM
The times they are a changing:
Geospatial Technology Trends in 2013
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
Michael Terner And the first one now
April, 2013 Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

2. New year was coming and I was
thinking about our industry
www.organizedactions.com
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3. So, last month I wrote my first blog piece
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4. Blog made three points
(about why/how the times are changing)
1. The term GIS may be obsolete
a. Endorsed a concept put forward by Paul Ramsey
and Brian Timoney
2. The geo marketplace is being disrupted
a. Desktop  Software as a Service
b. New options have appeared in a marketplace
dominated by one big player
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5. Overview
• Change happens. Period.
• What’s new?
• Some thoughts on how to
make sense of it all
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6. Technology change is constant
(and accelerating)
Need to plan around that fact
• Size and power of computers…
• Availability of the web…
• Emergence of tablets & touch user interfaces…
• Power of telephones…My phone has 32GB!?!
• Ease of use of software…
• Delivery mechanisms for software…
• Human expectations and receptivity…
• Etc. etc. etc. etc.
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7. What can my phone do?
• Phone calls
• Rolodex
• Watch TV
• Take pictures
• Take video
• Navigate
• Store 10’s of GBs
of music
• Surf the web
• Time my
presentation
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8. Esri geospatial 1988  2013
1988 – ArcInfo on UNIX (or VAX) w/ command line
1990’s – Esri migration to Windows and ArcView
user interface
2000’s – ArcGIS and Web-based GIS & server-side GIS emerge
2010’s – Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS);
ArcGIS On-line
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9. Change matters to our projects and
programs
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10. Local Govt. GIS has also grown up & changed
(Observations from LOGIS project)
• Greater adoption & investment at local level
– City, town and county GIS staff are commonplace
• Increased use of web applications
– Web for end-users
– Desktop for “GIS staff” and power users
• Emergence of
cloud-based offerings
– Appealing to the
“do-it-yourselfer”
www.gis1.net
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11. What’s in a name?
GIS
Geographic
Information
Systems
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12. GIS vs. Spatial IT
• Paul Ramsay from OpenGeo makes
observation at FOSS4G-NA 2012
• Is our industry mis-named and held back
by the term GIS?
• Isn’t GIS a “kind of software”?
• Is manipulating “thick, expensive, complicated desktop
software really what we’re doing now?”
• Or, is it more about integrating geospatial analysis and maps
into databases and other IT systems?
Watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCidOGLSWkU
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13. GIS is a component of Spatial IT
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14. Organizations are less interested in “GIS” for itself;
GIS is a tool to solve problems
(Now comes the Spatial IT part)
• The novelty of GIS has worn off
• Organizations have declared victory
– We have GIS
– Now, it’s about what we’re doing with GIS
• They may need help with the “tricky” parts
– System integration parts
– Expensive, infrastructure intensive parts
• Applications and tools
– Business system integration
– Asset management/work orders/inspections
– Address/centerline maintenance workflows
– Automated vehicle location (AVL)
– Etc. etc. etc. etc.
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15. So what are some of these changes?
(and what do they mean?)
Agile development methods
The importance of LiDAR data
Geospatial and The Cloud
Open Source Software
Platforms and Services
Mobile
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16. Agile vs. Waterfall Development
“Design/build” for software
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17. Agile vs. Waterfall Development
Why?
• Hedge against change
• Keep expectations in line
• Don’t building something that’s obsolete upon release
• Lots of regular and short communication
• Be cautious in creating something very large
– Create multiple, communicating components
– Create it incrementally through iterations
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18. LiDAR Data
• It’s a 3D world
• We have the technology
• Lasers create clouds of points
• Software interprets
points to create
surfaces and structures
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19. LiDAR Data
• Two major types
– Airborne (pointing down)
– Ground-based (pointing out)
• Power of creating derivative products
– Feature extraction: buildings
– Contouring
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20. Geospatial Cloud Basics
Options
Cost model

21. Case study for my company:
What led us to migrate to the cloud?
• Have run our own “data center” for ~15 years
– For our own stuff
– For our hosting infrastructure
• It’s a stout challenge
– Difficult and expensive
– Maintaining reliability and up-time
• Began exploring Amazon 2.5 years ago
– We can outsource our data center?
– We can rent computing & storage?
– No brainer (if it works).
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22. So what did we learn?
It worked!!!
• Really, really well
• Began a full fledged effort to migrate
our infrastructure to Amazon about
1.5 years ago
• As many servers as possible, as
quickly as possible
• We now have 17 servers in a Virtual
Private Cloud (VPC) on Amazon
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23. The cloud is not homogeneous
Infrastructure as a Service: IaaS
Thanks Wikipedia

24. Software as a Service - SaaS
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25. Platform as a Service - PaaS
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26. Infrastructure as a Service - IaaS
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27. The cost model has changed
• Used to be: periodic capital investment
• Now is: predictable monthly operations cost
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28. You do the math
~$102,000 of
equipment & licenses
every 3-4 years
~$2,000 /month
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29. But it’s not just about the $’s
• Their air conditioning & internet
• Unattainable levels of availability
• Scalability
– New server can be delivered in minutes
• Flexibility
– You can change your mind
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30. Open Source Software
We’re number 2?
• Directions podcast from 1/31/11 posed the question
• “Podcast: Are Esri and Open Source Solutions the Only Options?”
• Adena Schutzberg & Joe Francica discussed state of the
market in response to a reader’s comment
• There is increased maturity of the tools
• There is an emerging business ecosystem
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31. What is open source software?
• Managed as a project with a team of contributors
• Source code of software is freely available
• Software license often allows free deployment
Slides from Paul Ramsay, used with permission.
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32. There are now companies that provide
support and services for geospatial OSS
• OpenGeo is following the
“Red Hat model”
Slides from Paul Ramsay, used with permission.
• Insurance: That if something is broken, some entity will help get it
fixed; you can obtain support
• Assurance: That there is knowledge and expertise to assist you
with deploying and solving problems with these tools
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34. Open Source Summary
• Software is mature and community is vibrant
• Many organizations are having success with it
– AppGeo/Sanborn  FCC  NASA  US DoD 
States of OK, MA, etc.
• Affordable scalability
• Options to build
hybrid systems
– Best of breed potential
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35. Platforms & SaaS
• Variety of options are emerging
– Move your data there
– Combine with their base maps
– Use their tools to publish
• Can fill key niches
• Each has their own approach
and technical model
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36. Mobile
It is not an afterthought
www.visualthesaurus.com
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37. Mobile
People will need to access you stuff on mobile devices
• Pew Research Center
Pew Internet: Mobile ~ January 31, 2013
– 87% of American adults own a cell phone
– 45% of American adults own a smartphone
– “31% of current cell internet users say that they
mostly go online using their cell phone and not
using some other device such as a desktop or
laptop computer”
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38. Mobile decision making
• Platform decisions based on who does mobile best
– AppGeo recently chose Google for email
• Cloud-based “Platform as a Service” (PaaS)
– Joining states like UT and the US Dept. of Interior
– Part of our decision was Google’s “anywhere, any device” outlook
• Design decisions based on mobile devices
– What’s doable in the field?
– On a small screen?
– Less can be more
– Two user interfaces/adaptive design
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39. Some ideas on how to make
sense of it all
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40. Embrace the change
It’s not all the same / No one has all the answers
• Does one size really fit all?
• Tools to solve problems
• Tools to express your creativity
• Don’t settle for mediocre
• Understand what is available
• Understand how to mix-and-match
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41. It’s not a question of “or” but of “and”
• In the old days (i.e., 1980’s-1990’s)
– CAD vs. GIS? We need both
– Raster vs. vector? We need both
• New parallels with:
– Desktop vs. SaaS
• Many will need both
– Market leader vs. other options?
• There’s room for both
• Choosing the best of breed makes sense
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42. In conclusion
• From my blog entry:
“When I look ahead, I cannot help but conclude
that it is a fantastic time for our Spatial IT
industry. Never have there been so many
choices, and the learning and experimentation is
invigorating. It is always good to get out of a rut
and see thing from a fresh perspective.”
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43. Thank you
Michael Terner
mgt@appgeo.com
Twitter: @MT_AppGeo
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