From GIS to Spatial Resource Planning: The Benefits of
Integration to the Customer
One vendor recently announced that they had just realised that their customers want to
access their databases more than one user at a time - a remarkable observation in 1998.
The traditional approach of using a large number of checked-out single-user database
subsets ran out of steam years ago. A multi-user version-managed database is the way to
go.
Systems that demo well on small project-based databases do not scale to the petiorrnance
requirements of an enterprise-wide, mission-critical network-GIS.
All of these have provided, and in many instances continue to provide, a challenge to the
vendor community. That is not to say that one cannot deploy an operational system by
starting with a defective architecture, there are some limited successes. These include
systems now in operational use where the vendor has gone out of business. In all cases
these “successes” have been achieved at huge expense over many years, and are a
testament totheresolve of the people involved ingesting thejob done. Costs of $100
million dollars and more have been run up by these early pioneers, resulting in systems of
limited capability or even worse, failure. It is also true to say that fi.uther large
expenditures are required to maintain these systems and even more time and money is
needed to move firther into the realms of Spatial Resource Planning.
This section could be summed up by saying that there has been a change of emphasis
from a hodge-podge of badly integrated, incompatible pieces of system to an emphasis on
overall system architecture. Such an architecture, comprising compatible components and
a single consistent data model manipulated by appropriate languages, significantly lowers
implementation, operational and maintenance costs and reduces the risks of failure or cost
overrun. It is remarkable that those systems that had their roots in the technologies of the
70’s and early 80’s may not have accommodated many of these concepts until the next
millennium, even though they have been well understood and available in some systems
for the whole of the nineties.
The Spatial Resource Planning Market Place
The analysts, such as Dataquest, tell us that the worldwide market for “GIS software” is
of the order of 1 billion dollars, that another 4 to 5 billion is spent on “services” (not
including data capture) and another 1.5 billion on hardware. What “GIS software”
includes is not precisely defined, but may be as broad as any system that is capable of
putting a map on a screen. It certainly includes desktop mapping, CAD systems that are
used for mapping, as well as filly functional, professional, multi-user GIS. Here lies part
of the reason why there have been so many disappointing results from GIS projects in the
early years - the considerable risk in the spending of that 4 to 5 billion dollars. The
analysts also tell us that this market is growing at a rather tame 110/0per annum. This is
absurd when one considers the amount that is still to be done in the utility and
communications companies of the world to get operational systems into place to satisfy
the business drivers of competition, customer satisfaction and shareholder value.
The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) space occupied by giants such as SAP, Oracle,
PeopleSoft and Baan is growing at a considerably faster pace, yet the fimdamental
business drivers of their success are essentially the same.
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