Autodesk to cater to enterprise GIS

By N. N. Sachitanand

BANGALORE, JULY 30. When Andhra Pradesh CEO, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, talked about being able to present on a computer screen the economic parameters of each district in the State at the click of the mouse, he was referring to the use of a technology called geographical information systems (GIS) which is increasingly coming into vogue in the administrative as well as business spheres the world over.

GIS combines automated cartography with information technology. Automated cartography involves digitising maps and storing them in a manner which enables quick retrieval of any specific portion of a map.

The technology involved is somewhat akin to that used in computer aided design (CAD) drawings where the user can bore in from the large field of a entire assembly drawing to the detailed drawing of the tiniest component on the assembly. When such a digitised map bank is linked to a data bank (such as economic statistics), then we have a GIS.

The applications of GIS are innumerable. Telephone companies that are today digging up our cities for laying their cables can do their job with less damage to underground water pipes if they can use computerised maps of the city's roads containing the layout of the water mains and then layout their own cable cuts.

Dam engineers can use topographical maps to simulate what will be the area of flooding. A company providing countrywide logistics can combine the knowledge of the geographical location of its trucks as well as the location of the freight pickup and drop points to optimise fleet routing.

While GIS has been used in the business sphere for several years now, such use has been limited to departmental level applications. The new approach is to apply GIS across the total enterprise via the Internet.

`` It is an entirely new ball game,'' says Mr. S. Sridhar, President of Autodesk India Pvt. Ltd., ``in which the business space of ERP is married to geographical space to give a spatial data management system.''

Traditional GIS has several drawbacks such as:

(1) Reliance on proprietary architectures and data formats which are increasingly incompatible with state-of-the art approach to enterprise systems;

(2) High cost and complexity of customising and then maintaining customisations through revisions to a traditional GIS for being applied across the whole enterprise;

(3) Shortage of enterprise-wide applications of GIS;

(4) Incapability of being deployed on a wide scale to a large number of geospatially disseminated users; also, the cost of traditional GIS per user is disproportionately high;

(5) Long implementation cycles of several years, which may render the software obsolete.

With the recent acquisition of vision solutions, the world's leading CAD solutions provider, Autodesk, has embarked on providing to large enterprises, the most complete enterprise- spanning, geospatial, web-enabled data environment which can be quickly implemented. The architecture includes five tiers:

(1) Data tier, based on Oracle.

(2) Applications tier containing the ERP system complemented by the Vision server which makes it possible to extend GIS through the enterprise.

(3) Client tier housing Autodesk's automated mapping applications such as AutoCAD Map and Autodesk MapGuide.

(4) Web server tier to link existing data and applications systems and deliver their functionality via the web.

(5) Browser tier to enable universal accessibility via the web.

According to Mr. Asho Kumar, industry director, Asia Pacific GIS Solutions Division of Autodesk Asia Pvt. Ltd., India will play a key role in developing this new technology as well business in the Asia Pacific region.

``We are looking at Indian companies with some background in data management, spatial data modelling as well as domain expertise in areas such as telecom, water systems and power to partner us in developing Vision-based products, technical solutions and system architecture.''

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