Google is Trying To Bring ERP Consumers To Big Spatial Data Sets

SAP is going deeper with its Google collaboration to help customers manage large data volumes. The companies are working to make big data more intuitive, with visual displays to help decision-makers act more quickly.
Specifically, SAP plans to enhance its business -analytics software with location-based data capabilities that let people interact with real-time information. The companies want to pair enterprise apps with consumer tools like Google Maps and Google Earth.

“The trend toward ‘big data’ is accelerating the need for geospatial visualization of data. An increasing amount of data is being tagged with location information,” said Jonathan Becher, executive vice president of marketing at SAP. “For many applications, humans can see information relationships and data trends more easily when they are shown with maps and other spatial visualizations than they can using rows and columns of numbers. This allows non-expert users to make more accurate decisions on data, unlocking business intelligence for a wider audience.”

SAP-Google in Action

The SAP-Google partnership aims to help bring corporate information to life with location-based intelligence, including Google’s interactive map, satellite and even street-level views. Practically speaking, this allows SAP customers to analyze their businesses in a geospatial context to understand the “where” of their information.

Bringing mapping and other real-time technologies to the big-data front also lets decision-makers identify global, regional and local trends and how different scenarios impact them. The intended result includes increasing efficiency and profitability. SAP offers several examples of how organizations running SAP solutions with Google Maps API Premier could benefit from overlaying enterprise information onto intuitive mapping tools.

For instance, a telecom operator could use Google Earth and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software to perform dropped-call analysis and pinpoint the coordinates of faulty towers. A state revenue department could overlay household tax information on a map and group it at the county level to track the highest and lowest tax bases. Or a mortgage bank could perform risk assessment of its mortgage portfolio by overlaying foreclosure and default data with the location of loans on Google Maps.

“SAP is using a private API from Google that is not currently available to any other enterprise-software vendor. This private API provides additional functionality that, for example, allows the end user to upload their own geospatial information, including maps,” Becher said. “This opens up new use cases. A department store can use Google Street View to add an interactive virtual layout of their store with directions to each department. This street-view information can be combined with on-shelf availability and pricing information to allow customers to actually see the store and buy product from their mobile device.”
SAP is working to drive a convergence of enterprise and consumer software, giving an increasing number of people the ability to make important business decisions through the lens of mobile and social technologies while navigating the complexity of big data, or the growing volume, variety and increased velocity of information.

But do enterprises yet truly understand the value of this blend of enterprise with consumer technologies? “We are early on in the trends of marrying geospatial visualization tools with enterprise information, but it is rapidly accelerating,” Becher said. “We’ve seen dozens of use cases across all 24 SAP industries. Virtually every customer we’ve shared the vision with has been excited about using it to improve decision-making and operations in their business.”

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Spatial Energy Will Distribute Bing Maps For Global Energy Companies

Spatial Energy, Boulder, Colo., has reported an extension of their distribution agreement with Microsoft Corp.’s Bing Maps to integrate Bing Maps Services into Spatial on Demand – the world’s largest energy-specific online database and enterprise imagery management solution.

“Due to positive customer feedback and usage, Spatial Energy and Microsoft have extended their partnership to offer Bing Maps through Spatial on Demand to the oil and gas industry,” said Bud Pope, President, Spatial Energy. “Spatial on Demand, with Bing maps, has quickly become the defacto basemap for global energy companies. Customers fully recognize the value of no transaction or user fees, multiple layers of energy specific data, and output to their application of choice without having to pay additional fees, reformat the data, or have onerous licensing restrictions.”

In addition to Bing Maps, over 20 oil and gas specific data sets are included in Spatial on Demand. Major global content updates to Spatial on Demand in 2011 include Esri Data Services, DeLorme World Data, and OneGeology Geologic Data Services. New energy specific data sets are added quarterly. Spatial on Demand already offers global web services from all the major satellite providers, including DigitalGlobe, GeoEye and Spot Image/Astrium Services, providing the widest selection of data and services for any location in the world.

Bing Maps content integrated into Spatial on Demand include ready-to-use, cartographically rendered and cached 2D and 3D map services, including worldwide orthographic aerial and satellite imagery, imagery overlaid with roads and labels, the Bird’s eye (Oblique), Mapping, GeoCoding, Driving Directions, Proximity Searching, traffic incident data and street-level data for 67 countries/regions.

by epmag