A geographic information system (GIS) is comprised of five components; hardware, software, data, people, and methodology. This system allows an organization to capture, store, analyze, manage, and display data, which is geographically referenced to the earth, in real or near-real time. The ability to “map” your data allows decision makers to see their data and make decisions based on the geographic patterns representing a distribution of the information. For example, a pizza delivery

company can map their store locations and perform the network analysis to determine the drive distances and times appropriate for that store location based on road impedances, such as one-way traffic, stop lights, and road type. This information is then overlaid with the population database to see how much of the population is in the “served” area. By doing this analysis for each store, the analyst can see the “gap” between stores for the un-serviced population and determine the appropriate location for the new store by overlaying the parcel database to identify commercial properties on major roads for easy access. This type of analysis is not only performed by delivery companies, but also by hospitals for identifying clinic sites, health departments for locations of educational classes, by schools for future building locations, by police for sub stations, by fire departments for station locations, and there are many more similar applications across most industries.

Traditionally, a GIS required staff to create, store, and maintain the GIS data locally or on a network but with the advent of web services, a GIS can obtain data sources from across the web. Thus, the source organization maintains the data, allowing the destination organization to integrate the GIS data into their business processes on a real or near-real time basis.

According to a July 6th, 2006 report by Daratech, worldwide GIS/Geospatial revenue was forecasted to reach $3.6 billion in 2006, up from $2.82 billion in 2004. This growth is driven by sales of commercial data products and the emergence of desktop and Internet-based systems. ESRI, the GIS software market leader, said that its software sales have continued to steadily grow with the largest growth occurring in the international market.

Visual Integrator has expertise in the creation and integration of geospatial services into business processes, financial systems, travel systems, employee tracking, facility/property/asset management, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), business intelligence, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and operations management, as well as, market analysis, regulatory compliance, supply chain management, logistics, risk analysis, customer analysis, market development, military operations, interoperability, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), distribution and fleet management, aviation, roadway management, mobile enterprise, mobile government, defense applications, operations support systems, and much more.