Hexagon 2011; the razing of the wall

The ERDAS portion of the Hexagon conference began on June 5, 2011 with customer training and ERDAS Ignite 2011. I arrived Sunday evening the 5th and on Monday morning attended the ERDAS International Distributors Meeting. In this meeting, ERDAS outlined what we are developing for the 2012 release, due in the next service packs and the development synergies we are working on with Intergraph GeoMedia and ERDAS IMAGINE. Our distribution partners are as excited as ERDAS employees about where ERDAS is going, and that ERDAS is aggressive in our plans and execution strategies.

As for me, I may be more excited about a different theme than others. Yes, the new modeling environment is exciting. Yes, the viewing environment moving to a more advanced form of the ER Mapper dynamic processing viewer is powerful. Yes, faster data processing is always enticing. And yes, LiDAR is needed by the mapping market and I love we are moving to deliver solutions there. And yes, Hexagon renting out Universal Studios, including Harry Potter World, for all conference attendees Tuesday evening was great too!

But, the theme of my excitement dates back to conversations I had with the ERDAS management in 1991 and have continued until today; saying ERDAS should be the one to tear down the wall between raster (remote sensing and raster GIS) and vector; by putting a powerful vector processing and database capabilities into ERDAS IMAGINE.

I have long believed this artificial segregation of data formats and processing techniques hurt the greater geospatial community, and ERDAS should raze the wall. Other than a purely academic or research exercise; remote sensing without significant vector capabilities limits what the customer can accomplish. Soon, for the first time ERDAS will have an arsenal of vector processing capabilities and significant database access.

The restrictions are being removed, the raster/vector barrier will be removed at the dawn of the point cloud data processing era. This time next year, you will see a very different ERDAS IMAGINE product. A product that makes the best remote sensing product in the world better, faster, uses dynamic processing, has new photogrammetry tools, new LiDAR tools, has many vector and database tools, and offers more than these to the GIS world.

This is not a token move, this is real. This is the path customers have asked ERDAS to take for 30 years; tearing down the raster – vector wall. The wall will be down before the Hexagon 2012 meeting.

Thank you Mladen Stojic, Joel Campbell, John Graham, Jürgen Dold, and Ola Rollén for giving the GIS community what they have long requested.

Hexagon’s Ola Rollén Oct 2010 Geospatial World Interview

Selected questions and answers from Hexagon’s Ola Rollén in an Oct 2010, Geospatial World Interview

What would be different at Intergraph under your leadership?

“Hexagon will bring in more aggressive investment and re-investment to keep customer satisfaction and belief in Intergraph intact. Process, Power and Marine (PPM) business of Intergraph has grown significantly in the last few years but I do agree that GeoMedia has not advanced as much as it should have. There is definitely an opportunity for Hexagon to turn it around. It is a great product and with capital investments of Hexagon, I am quite confident of bringing it to the required levels and Erdas will provide a great support and help in this endeavour.”

Shall we presume that Erdas will get integrated with Intergraph?

“Yes, we can presume that Erdas will become a part of Intergraph as it makes more sense to be integrated with Intergraph and at the same time Zeiss/Intergraph (ZI) will become a part of Leica Geosystems. There will be an exchange of technology between the two groups.”

Acquisition of Intergraph, for sure, puts Hexagon well ahead of other geospatial companies, making it the leader of the geospatial market. Such a position also puts extraordinary pressure to not just maintain the leadership position, but also to invest in market development and provide direction to the industry. What specific plans do you have to address this situation?

“Hexagon is one of the leaders of the geospatial industry and we understand our responsibility well. In the short term, we have the obligation to provide a more competitive GeoMedia for traditional and loyal users who relied on it for decades. In the long term, I think it is even more important to provide a path to the GIS user to remain competitive against the large movements led by Google and Microsoft as they begin to encroach upon the professional GIS space. I think that's where Hexagon could provide a more stable solution to professional GIS community to further their profession.”

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