Terralink

Page URL:	http://www.terralink.co.nz/newsroom/press_releases_archive/2005_archive/30_march_2005.htm
Date Printed:	Tuesday, 7 September, 2010

GIS Demand Grows from Local Authorities 30 March 2005 Wellington GIS and mapping company, Terralink International, is expecting increased demand for GIS from Local Government customers this year and is beefing up its capabilities to meet the challenge. Put simply, GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is software that presents a database on a map Terralink CEO Mike Donald says technology advances are allowing GIS to be used increasingly by New Zealand local authorities of all sizes for tasks ranging from managing infrastructure assets to showing the public the location of amenities. “There are big changes underway in the GIS world that are making powerful GIS tools more accessible for smaller councils,” he says. “For example, ESRI is one of the most versatile GIS platforms, but in the past the costs associated with developing in ESRI, buying licenses and maintaining large amounts of data meant only the biggest organizations could afford it.   “But now that’s all changing with ESRI ArcWeb services. It’s a remote hosted pay-as-you-go model that has dramatically reduced the barriers to entry and made far greater use of this GIS platform possible for all local authorities in New Zealand, regardless of their size. Mike Donald says that developments such as this mean that local authorities now have a far greater choice of which GIS platform to use for each challenge. To accommodate this new world, Terralink is adding more specialists to its in-house development team. From May, Terralink will have development capabilities in all four of the major GIS platforms - ESRI, Smallworld, Map Info and TATUK. Terralink will be the only New Zealand GIS development house that can work in all four platforms. “We want to be able to offer impartial advice on the best development platform for any given use,” he says. “Each of the platforms we work with has strengths, and each is evolving. Our goal is to match those strengths with the needs of our customers. We want to be the GIS development house where customers know they’re getting a solution in a certain platform because it fits their needs – not because it’s the platform the development house works in.”   For more information, go to www.terralink.co.nz.