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.