Tag Archive for software as a service

NAR 2011 Trends Transforming the Real Estate Industry: Mobile, Cloud Computing & Social Media

November 17, 2011 Christina Coggins, Marketing Manager No comments
NAR 2011 Expo

Last week the Digital Map Products team attended the National Association of Realtors Expo in Anaheim, Ca. We found the show to be very informative and a great way to learn about the latest technological innovations for real estate, something close to our hearts. The trend we found most exciting is how mobile, cloud computing and social media are changing the way the real estate industry does business.

In a session entitled “The One Thing Power Brokers Can’t Live Without” it was impressive to learn how far mobile has come and how integral it is to real estate search, in particular to Gen Yers. Younger generations do everything on the go and having a user friendly real estate website, designed specifically for mobile devices is key. Users need to be able to perform map-based searches on the fly and obtain information quickly and easily from their mobile device.

In addition, the buzz word we’re all very familiar with “Cloud Computing”, is especially relevant to the real estate industry as a means to increase collaboration and efficiency while cutting costs. The cloud also offers real estate professional easy access to critical information, such as property and transaction data, instantly. If there’s one industry out there that can really benefit from cloud computing it’s real estate.

Finally, the transformation social media is having on the real estate industry continuous to be a presence you can’t ignore. NAR did a great of keeping everyone in the loop at the conference via social media. Attendees and those who could not attend were able to follow along via Twitter, Facebook, live video feeds, and blogs. In addition, we enjoyed the great interaction we had with live speakers and other conference attendees via Twitter. Thanks to the thriving Twitter feed we were able to keep up with all the fantastic sessions at NAR even though we couldn’t attend them all. It just goes to show what an incredible tool social media is for staying connected with customers and on top of trending topics.

If you’d like to learn more about real estate technology trends and best practices check out the links below:

Cloud Computing, Mapping, Real Estate , , , , ,

Cities Satisfy Residents, Save Money with GIS in the Cloud

August 17, 2011 Christina Coggins, Marketing Manager 2 comments

Cities have long been on the forefront of using spatial technology to share data with their citizens and help their staff do their jobs more effectively. Longview, Washington, a town of 35,000 located between Seattle and Portland, is one great example of such spatially savvy cities. Longview is also on the cutting edge of using cloud-based technology in new and innovative ways.

Longview’s city staff works hard to foster a strong sense of community engagement. For years, citizens had been asking for city and community data to be available in an interactive format online. Many cities feel this same demand: in the Google era, citizens want to be able to find their own answers to questions 24 hours a day. But, like many cities of its size, Longview didn’t have the budget, manpower, or time to build a custom interactive GIS interface. They turned to Digital Map Products’ CityGIS™ and CommunityView™ for a software-as-a-service solution that was both faster and less expensive than building it themselves.

Now residents of Longview can go to the city’s website to see property and community information. Using the city’s CommunityView™ powered online maps, residents can:

  • Get detailed information about the city’s facilities and parks
  • Find their garbage and recycling collection dates
  • Look up water and sewer utility data
  • See bike routes and trails on a map
  • Get zoning and property information
  • Research public school locations and statistics
  • Access information about bus stops, bus routes, and ADA cutout ramps

The results for Longview have been impressive. City staff receives fewer phone calls and walk-in requests for information. There is an increased awareness of city services and community amenities. Residents can find information any time day or night. And an added bonus for the city was that it actually saved money with the system, an important benefit in this tight economy.

If your city is doing innovative things with spatial technology and cloud computing, we’d love to hear about them and share those ideas with our readers.

To learn more about DMP’s local government solutions visit:

http://www.digmap.com/Campaigns/CloudGISHelpsCities.html

Cloud Computing, GIS, Government , , , , , ,

It’s Time to Try Mapping in the Cloud

June 30, 2011 Jim Skurzynski, CEO No comments

One of the most exciting trends in the mapping world right now is the convergence of mapping and cloud computing. For many years, only large businesses with dedicated GIS departments could afford the technology and expertise to utilize the power of mapping. But this year, we reached the tipping point where cloud GIS makes sense for almost any sized business. The cloud is making spatial technology – which businesses once saw as complex, time-consuming, and costly – simpler, faster to implement and less expensive than ever.

5 Reasons to Try Cloud-Based Spatial Technology
1. The cloud removes many of the obstacles of traditional GIS. GIS has always held the potential to improve efficiency, collaboration and decision-making in business, but at a high cost in technology and skilled experts. What’s changed in the last year is that, for a number of reasons, the model for developing mapping applications has switched to a cloud-based approach. We’ll be talking about this a lot on this blog, but the most important point is this – cloud computing makes GIS more affordable, faster to deploy, more widely available, easier to use, more flexible and more secure.

2. Cloud computing makes mapping much easier to implement and maintain. While large enterprises used to spend countless hours developing and maintaining mapping applications, with the cloud all they have to do is “turn it on” and it’s ready to use. Developers are now creating apps for businesses, and since those apps are cloud-based, they can be rapidly deployed. Cloud providers are also taking over the heavy lifting of updating data sets, so that businesses can just pull the data they need from the cloud. Development time is compressed from years to weeks, and maintenance time disappears completely.

3. Mapping in the cloud is more affordable. The most expensive part of the old world of GIS was getting the data, making the data to work in the application you built, and maintaining the data. That’s all changed as developers take on the tasks of finding the data, making it work and keeping it updated. Since developers can spread their cost among numerous clients, the costs are shared, and that’s great news for businesses’ bottom lines.

4. Using cloud geospatial services frees time to focus on what really matters – the user experience. With cloud services, businesses are freed from the arduous task of simply making the spatial technology work, and can focus instead on their own core competencies and making the spatial technology work best for their users. Many of these companies, for the first time, are able to focus on creating an intuitive and customized user experience to fit the unique user needs of their customer base. That benefit of the cloud, along with the increasing demand for mobile applications, is turning the spotlight directly on usability and simplicity, which is good for both customers and for businesses who want to serve them.

5. Mapping in the cloud gives you more options than ever. Like I said, I think the tipping point for cloud-based mapping happened earlier this year. Now that we’ve tipped, expect the pace of cloud-based spatial technology to accelerate. Google predicts that over the next ten years, virtually all technology innovation will happen in the cloud. For businesses, that means looking to a new breed of cloud-native spatial technology developers for an increasingly steady flow of cool new apps. Like the app world in general, now that developers have entered the market and businesses are liking what they develop, there’s an explosion of new APIs for data and mapping. The marketplace is demanding more, and I fully expect cloud-based developers to keep finding innovative new things to do with mapping.

My advice if you’ve been wondering if its time for your business to take advantage of the cloud – don’t be afraid to dive in. Cloud computing is not a flash in the pan. It’s here to stay and there are many reasons to start using it right now.

Learn More:

Cloud Computing, Mapping , , , ,

Why Mapping Will Go Mainstream in 2011

June 28, 2011 Jim Skurzynski, CEO One comment

I’m predicting 2011 will be the year mapping goes mainstream. By that I mean individuals and companies that have not already grasped the relevance of “thinking in maps” will come to understand the value of spatial technology tools and use them in greater numbers than ever before. As they do, we’ll see even more fast-paced and exciting breakthroughs including: sophisticated business, government and consumer uses; a rapidly-expanding pool of useful applications; and greatly enhanced creativity in the way spatial information can be used.

Mapping, and its use in viewing, analyzing and interacting with data, used to be important business tools only for the largest organizations that could afford in-house GIS experts. Today, spatial technology has become pervasive across many business sectors from local government to real estate to the utility industry. As consumers become more “spatially literate” and especially as the cloud makes location technology faster-to-implement, easier to use and more cost effective, mapping technology is becoming a core business tool for large, medium-sized and small businesses, alike.

The paradigm shift for mapping began with Google and Bing Maps, when the whole world suddenly saw the power of finding directions, looking for nearby attractions and otherwise organizing information in a visual format. The move to “spatial literacy” began overnight and hasn’t slowed down since it started. Now many types of businesses and government agencies have incorporated spatial technology into their core business operations as a means to improve their efficiency and decision-making.

At Digital Map Products, our mission is to help businesses of all sizes leverage and succeed with spatial technology. We were excited when mapping hit the public radar, and we’ve watched with enthusiasm and more and more people saw the light about spatial technology. But its only now that we think the universe is aligned for spatial technology to become what we’ve always imagined it becoming – a basic building block in the way businesses gather, organize and share information, analyze trends and make important decisions.

Why do I think the stage is set for a spatial technology revolution? Here are just a few of the reasons:

  • Several key economic sectors already count spatial technology as a core business tool and they are being joined by new industries and government users every day. For example, the real estate industry has always been on the forefront of using mapping information. Real estate associations and developers began displaying information about property in a location-based form – on a map rather than in a list. As the industry has used spatial technology, its sophistication has grown. Now, multiple listing services (MLSs) and forward-thinking real estate organizations are using interactive trend maps, advanced data visualization tools and the analytical power of location-based technology. Other sectors look to the real estate industry for innovative ideas around mapping applications.
  • Developers are creating exciting location-based apps to fit the needs of specific business sectors. Spatial APIs, basically mapping in the cloud, exploded in 2010 and will continue to grow in importance. Savvy developers are turning out exciting new sets of geo-data and mapping features that are ready to plug and play directly into your siteFor example, if your customers want to know about the school district that serves a particular piece of property, there’s an API for that (in full disclosure, we have an API for that!).. Not only are there more data and feature options from which to choose, but businesses no longer have to process, maintain and update their mapping additions themselves because their cloud provider takes care of that. Not only does the cloud help them develop a more advanced mapping application, but with the time they save, developers can focus on applying mapping to their unique business needs. The cloud breeds innovation in mapping.
  • Governments face an increasing demand for location-based services even as they face recessionary budget cuts. While the recession has slowed down some parts of the economy, it’s actually sped up the development and adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. We’ve seen local governments turn to the SaaS models to help them offer do-it-yourself services to their residents: users can look up their trash day, research crime statistics and even report potholes. I think as the recession abates, companies that tried out SaaS services because of their cost-effectiveness with stay with them because they tend to be user-friendly and easy to maintain.
  • Data is coming from new sources, both experts and ordinary folks. Major disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti have shown us all the power of crowdsourcing, or using spatial technology to pool our information, keep conversations flowing, and solve problems. Volunteers are mapping roads, buildings, and other location information and finding new ways to share it everyday. This seems to prove the public has embraced both “thinking in maps” and their new role in creating location content.
  • Developing spatial applications is becoming more affordable and more interesting. In the early days of GIS, building an application took a lot of experience and a major time commitment. The new robust cloud-based spatial development platforms reduce the cost and collapse development timeframes. As key players like Google and Microsoft provide base map layers, cloud-based development platforms allow developers more room to dream up novel uses of location information and creative ways to combine information to allow us to see it in ways never before possible.

We’ll keep watching the trends in this blog, and I think we’ll continue to see new industries embrace spatial technology, new frontiers open up in the way mapping applications are used by businesses and consumers, and entirely new sectors joining those that already understand the power of location-based information.

Mapping , , , , , , , ,