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<div style="padding: 4px; background-color: #c3d9ff;"><h3 style="margin:0px 3px;font-family:sans-serif">Sent to you by Hugo Martins via Google Reader:</h3></div>
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<div style="font-family:sans-serif;overflow:auto;width:100%;margin: 0px 10px"><h2 style="margin: 0.25em 0 0 0"><div class=""><a href="http://blog.opengeo.org/2010/04/28/market-sandwich/">Market Sandwich</a></div></h2>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.5em">via <a href="http://blog.opengeo.org" class="f">OpenGeo</a> by Paul Ramsey on 4/28/10</div><br style="display:none">
<div style="width:158px"><img title="Mmmmmmm, market sandwich..." src="http://simpsonovi.comics.cz/soubory/obrazky/homer/images/homer082.jpg" alt="Mmmmmmm, market sandwich..." width="148" height="169"><p>Mmmmmmm, market sandwich...</p></div>
<p>When describing the <a href="http://opengeo.org/products/suite/">OpenGeo Suite</a>, I am often asked one of two questions (depending on who I am talking to): “why not just use ESRI” or “why not just use Google”.</p>
<p>The answer to the first question depends on the person asking, ranging from the “ability to economically scale out to larger user loads” to more <a href="http://blog.opengeo.org/2010/04/25/the-real-world/">managerial things</a> like “having multi-vendor options and flexibility in tool choice”.</p>
<p>The answer to the second question is was the subject of a <a href="http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=8553">recent article in Ovum</a>, which notes:</p>
<blockquote><p>The key exposures for agencies using the free map platforms relate to some natural consequences of the services being provided for free. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li>lack of assurances regarding the continuous provision or reliability of the service or that it will remain available for free in the future</li>
<li>lack of control over the content displayed by the vendors on the platform – particularly advertisements</li>
<li>lack of control over how the vendors use data that is provided by agencies</li>
<li>the requirement to indemnify the vendors from any claims arising from the agency’s use of the service.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>The market runs from the cloud-based web services (Google, Bing) through to self-managed proprietary (ESRI), and there is a gap in the middle where customers need the flexibility and scalability of the consumer services married with the feature richness and control of self-managed software.</p>
<p>And that gap, in the middle of the “market sandwich”, is where we plant our flag.</p></div>
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