[Portugal] Market Sandwich

[Hugo Martins]

  Sent to you by Hugo Martins via Google Reader: Market Sandwich via
OpenGeo by Paul Ramsey on 4/28/10

Mmmmmmm, market sandwich...

When describing the OpenGeo Suite, 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”.

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 managerial things like “having multi-vendor options and
flexibility in tool choice”.

The answer to the second question is was the subject of a recent
article in Ovum, which notes:

The key exposures for agencies using the free map platforms relate to
some natural consequences of the services being provided for free.
These include:

- lack of assurances regarding the continuous provision or reliability
of the service or that it will remain available for free in the future
- lack of control over the content displayed by the vendors on the
platform – particularly advertisements
- lack of control over how the vendors use data that is provided by
agencies
- the requirement to indemnify the vendors from any claims arising from
the agency’s use of the service.
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.

And that gap, in the middle of the “market sandwich”, is where we plant
our flag.

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