Voice & Vision

Mapping and GIS at Intergraph

by Susan Smith

Preetha Pulusani, president of Intergraph Mapping and GIS Solutions, spoke with GISVision about Intergraph''s return to profitability in 2001, the changes that have taken place at Intergraph, and the Mapping and GIS Solutions business unit today.

Preetha Pulusani

What changes did Intergraph make to reach its goal of profitability in 2001?

As you know, Intergraph had some rough years in the mid to late 90s - a lot of that was due to the position we found ourselves in with the hardware business for various reasons and also because of the problems with Intel.

When Jim Taylor became CEO, he analyzed the businesses we had in Intergraph. We had a fairly diverse group of businesses at that time. His first decision was to exit the hardware business. His second was to focus on the core businesses where we were either No. 1 or No. 2 and create vertical business units around them. We ended up with five vertical business units. There were other segments of Intergraph business that did not really fit into any of these five business units, so Intergraph sold those assets. An example would be the civil, plotting, and raster CAD-based products that were sold to Bentley.

Intergraph''s global vertical business units are now structured so each business understands what its revenue is worldwide and is also totally accountable for its cost worldwide. This is the first time we have had such global business units. Prior to this, we had product centers that were based here in Huntsville and selling units that were separate. What we have gained from verticalization, for example, with the mapping and GIS business, is we now have a global mapping and GIS business with selling units accountable to the product centers.

All of these changes have helped us over the past year to maintain profitability during every quarter.

Mapping and GIS at Intergraph Continued…

What are the five vertical business units?

Intergraph Government Solutions - primarily U.S. business, services business, with no real technology offering.

Process Power and Offshore - plant design systems.

Public safety - E911 dispatch management systems as well as utilities and communication solutions. So the focus of our AM/FM/GIS systems is on large global communication and utility companies.

Mapping and GIS Solutions - Has a product suite and sells to more than 60 countries to the mapping and GIS market segment.

ZI/ Imaging - A joint venture between Intergraph and Zeiss, to provide earth imaging that includes photogrammetry and imaging.

All except Government Solutions has a technology or product suite and the software enabled solutions and the services that go along with it. Government Solutions provides implementation services in some instances. They use our software, for example, with a project such as the Tennessee Road Information Management System, a large multimillion-dollar project that uses GeoMedia technology as the underpinning. But they don''t necessarily use our software. They are very focused on the services aspect of business.

What are Intergraph''s areas of product development today in GIS and mapping?

One area we describe as core GIS is version 5.0 of the GeoMedia suite of products we''re about to launch in May. With this version, the platform and the product suite have really matured, and we have new functionality in the areas of data capture, data validation, analysis, map publishing, and Web mapping. That''s the core GIS.

Our other focus for development is industry solutions, where we are working in four significant areas. We are introducing GeoMedia-based products in public works for example, for infrastructure management of water and wastewater systems. The second area is transportation, for management of linear referencing systems, and the third is for land management, parcel management. The fourth is location-based services (LBS), for which we have a focused division called IntelliWhere that is part of Intergraph Mapping and GIS Solutions.

Where is Intergraph moving in the future?

Each vertical business unit has a business plan for this year and a three-to-five-year strategic plan in which they have outlined what they''re going to be doing and what market opportunities they''re going to be pursuing. I''d like to touch on a few aspects of what we''re doing in Mapping and GIS.

We are maintaining profits gained in the last year - and last year was not an easy year given the economic climate, as you know. We want to build on the valuable assets we have and grow our business. We are doing this in several ways. The first is in the area of partnerships. In Mapping and GIS, we have been working with strategic level partners such as Oracle and IBM, and we are seeing that GIS is becoming more and more a part of business systems such as CRM. For those kinds of systems, the GIS plays second fiddle.

When we talk to a GIS manager, we''re very comfortable speaking a language we both understand, but when we start talking about taking our technology into much bigger markets, it''s a different matter. Intergraph is not the leader there; these other systems integrators really take us into these markets. They have been working with this customer base and know the language. We are working with global as well as local partners in this area. In some cases, it''s a matter of them embedding our technology through an OEM relationship, and in some cases we come in as a partner to implement the geospatial element. We really see a lot of growth and future in this area.

The other area in which we have seen great success is in the Team GeoMedia program. This program started when we released version 1.0 of GeoMedia to increase market awareness and awareness of GeoMedia as a technology platform.

Mapping and GIS at Intergraph Continued…

More recently, we''ve created another tier of partners, which includes our Registered Solutions Provider (RSP) and Registered Solutions Center (RSC). These programs are designed to encourage partners to use GeoMedia as the base for their applications. We just signed our 100th RSP, and we''re very proud of the success of these programs worldwide. The Team GeoMedia program provides us with a global framework of partners, which has contributed to the adoption of GeoMedia technology in many more applications involved with geospatial data.

We believe LBS and IntelliWhere have vast growth potential and are investing in that area. This will take us to a different market from the traditional GIS market. I have noticed that some of the traditional GIS vendors are promoting LBS as the same technology by a different name, but I see a totally different market segment. Sure, our traditional customers will have a need for LBS and we will provide that, but that''s not what it''s all about. It''s about using location-based technology in different applications, then providing it to the companies that need to offer the service to their consumers. We don''t go directly to consumers, but we provide our platform to companies that service consumers.

I think the world is finally waking up to what it means to be interoperable, and so we''ve invested a lot in interoperability. We are a founding member of the Open GIS Consortium (OGC), and we''re really seeing a paradigm shift finally happening in the industry thanks to the efforts of OGC. We have seen some key customers who have recognized the needs of data interoperability, data reuse, and data accessibility talking about systems and visions that are based on these concepts. That works great for Intergraph because the GeoMedia platform has been built with those concepts.

In the past when we sold a system, it didn''t matter if that system was able to access data in other departments. Now enterprise systems, interoperability, Web services, and data access have become mainstream needs and are part of what we provide.

We do have a focus on certain market segments for which we are developing industry solutions - public works, transportation, land management - and will continue in those traditional areas. We also see many new areas opening up.

With LBS, are you thinking of moving into a more commercial sector?

With LBS, we''re not discounting anything. It is a new area with many fresh opportunities and we know that what we see today is the tip of the iceberg. Over the past year and a half, we have developed an extensive knowledge base within our company with the IntelliWhere division and are looking at many ways to market that. In spite of the downturn in the communication industry, we see opportunities from other service providers. When we look at services they need to offer, we realize they will need to buy platforms and tools.

Is your LBS business larger in Europe than in North America?

For the past year and a half, we have focused on enterprise implementation. We''ve been taking advantage of our current channels, and we''ve been finding that our traditional customers need this service. We have realized that, whether it''s workforce automation or some other mobile piece, our technology works for them. If I look at revenue in both Europe and the United States, it''s about equal, but if I look at newer market segments such as portals and telcos only, the revenue is higher in Europe.

In terms of mapping and GIS, are you doing a lot of customization and implementation for your customers?

Yes, we find with GIS customers, their requirements cannot be met with an out-of-the-box solution. There is work to be done with customers in data modeling, structure of the database, or customizing the applications for different types of users in the organization. Sometimes our partners work on the implementation - it''s not exclusively Intergraph. We also have partners who take our technology and implement it for their customers as well.

GeoSpatial World, the Intergraph GeoSpatial Users Community International Training and Management Conference, is where we bring it all together. Customers and partners from around the world gather to see the latest developments in the mapping and GIS industry and present their own unique solutions in technical sessions. GeoSpatial World 2002 will be held in Atlanta, June 10 through 12.