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Cloud Computing And Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
- April 1, 2015
- Posted by: Admin
- Category: Blogs, Business Intelligence, Cloud Services
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has undergone a major revamp in the recent past. The role of location intelligence, especially in mission-critical decisions has added to the evolution of GIS. What started as a trial, Software as a Service (SaaS) or cloud services in GIS has evolved into a trusted medium for most enterprises. The growing size and complexity of location-based data has enabled companies to embrace newer workflows, efficient data management capabilities, and infrastructure capacity planning. Cloud computing has changed the dynamics of GIS at a massive scale.
What is driving the growth of GIS and Cloud Services?
Cloud services add tremendous value across all segments of businesses that rely on geospatial data and location intelligence and empower stakeholders to make the most of growing complexities, cost management, and information security.
Massive volume of data: As data is growing exponentially across every industry vertical, location intelligence has emerged as one of the ways to manage data seamlessly. Address resolution through geocoding has enabled users to communicate across diverse systems. With cloud services, users can readily access geographic-attributed data on demand and subscribe to patches and updates seamlessly.
Massive user growth: Today’s location-intelligent systems cascade through every conceivable user base, from sales and marketing to operations and risk assessment to hydrology and urban planning. With rising proliferation of open source and proprietary mapping and analysis applications with intuitive user interfaces and design, more users are now demanding all levels of access to geo-analytic tools.
More complex data: Modern spatial analysis applications can process complex data like 3d imagery and high definition graphics from multiple data sources. With growing computing power, companies can access data of all complexities. This was unthinkable a decade ago.
Mobility: GPS, smartphones, and high-speed wireless communications have fostered a new frontier of innovation in cloud-based GIS. Telecom or natural resources analysts can now go out in the field and collect, analyze, and validate real-time spatial data anytime, anywhere.
Benefits
Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): With a cloud-based GIS model, organizations do not have to pay for any software or hardware cost on-premises. In addition to low server maintenance and minimal update costs, organizations ensure significant cost savings over a period of time.
More resource utilization: SaaS helps organizations deal with changes in GIS requirements more efficiently. GIS users can work on their core aspects of their job and not worry about system queuing or capacity constraints.
Low risk: Organizations can shift risk areas to their SaaS provider and in turn receive 24×7 uptime, enhanced security, and robust data backup.
Client Says
We are implementing Plasma Ag Solutions across our network of locations. Plasma Ag provides several capabilities that stand out for our users such as Programs, Rebate management, and Inventory tracking. It is quite difficult to track margin information on crop protection products in our industry so our Owner Operators love the transparency the system provides. We utilize the system to professionalize our support to the network and it has become a bit success with all of them.
Several hundreds of our retail locations and joint ventures use Plasma Ag solutions as a part of their core operations. Plasma solutions provide very useful tools and deep insights to users – including tracking customer transactions and financial information. Their applications are tightly integrated with CRM, ERP, Accounting, and our other mission critical IT infrastructure and third-party systems. The dashboards provide rich analysis and insights that helps us adjust to the changing markets.
Plasma Ag solutions have been a tremendous asset to our operations. They offer powerful capabilities such as managing Retail programs, Products, Programs, local discounts, and wraps. Ability to track inventory at physical locations, calculating true and average costs, rebates and accruals on user-friendly and simple interfaces has helped us and our retail customers adopt Plasma Ag solutions quickly.
Our software, system and processes used to be an old struggling engine. Plasma team solved all that. With exceptional training and planning, their consultative executive team down to their support team executed the deployment with first-class speed and professionalism. Their platform not only removed all the pain points in my division, but also created a ripple effect benefiting my entire company.
It has been my experience that Plasma has the technical expertise, commitment, and work-ethic to deliver best-in-class solutions that allow business owners to fully realize business strategies and objectives. They work in a highly professional manner to ensure that the clients’ requirements and recommendations are fully realized. I would highly recommend Plasma for any web enablement initiative that you may be considering.
Plasma has been a smart choice for us as our online business partner. I don’t even consider our work with them outsourcing because Plasma management takes the time to truly understand our business and is able to direct its technology resources for the most efficient and quality output possible. I don’t think you can say that about many companies in their space.
Plasma has been a smart choice for us with our online requirements. I would recommend them to any company looking to better manage their online presence.
It has been my pleasure to work with the Plasma Team since August 2008. We have completed three major builds and multiple smaller projects in this time. I heartily recommend Plasma Comp to anyone needing a workable, practical and effective system solution. Plasma’s Q&A process was extremely thorough. They quickly understood what was needed and then worked the process with pointed and penetrating questions to ensure they had the entire picture of the finished product.
I think Plasma has come a long way in embracing our philosophy of becoming more agile, both leading and following in this area when necessary. The teams have been very open to change and have a great attitude. I have no complaints!
Plasma is a great vendor to work with. They took us from an email-based process to a fully designed, web-based workflow. They have dramatically changed how our devices are certified to be used on our network and they will save you time as well! One of the many processes in our current environment has saved us so much time; from four months down to a few days!
