Incorporating geospatial information into the large quantities of existing data an organization maintains adds immense value. Maturing standards and improvements in web services, data compression, metadata standards, delivery and processing power are bringing geospatial data exploitation to the enterprise, making this technology readily available to non-traditional geospatial businesses. Organizations integrating geospatial technology are more equipped to manage their data and storage, with new tools to automate, extract, collaborate and share information.

Previously, geospatial technologies operated in the desktop environment, or via web applications detached from other vital software packages. Without interoperability, geospatial technology remained separate from other integral applications, including those associated with an organization?s manufacturing, supply chain, financial, human resources and customer resource management systems. Separated from geospatial applications, data spread throughout an organization could not be adequately analyzed and fully transformed into the most comprehensive and understandable information. However, recent innovations and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) developments have introduced a growing number of interoperable, platform agnostic geospatial solutions. These technological advancements allow an organization to maximize the effectiveness of their existing business system.

By incorporating the geospatial component into a business system, organizations have the ability to transform data into geospatial information. By incorporating standards-based interoperability throughout the authoring, managing, connecting and delivering components, the data is seamlessly integrated. As the data progresses from authoring to delivery, the value of the information also increases, from captured source content to information providing valuable decision support.

By incorporating geospatial technology into an existing business system, vast quantities of data become useable information, fully equipped to serve an organization cross-departmentally and in the B2B context. The enterprise is fully utilized, thereby maximizing an organization?s potential. The future for the geospatial industry and for successful organizations is the geospatial business system ? empowering the existing business system?s structure by integrating existing and emerging geospatial and location-based technology to provide information throughout the enterprise.