Data Democratisation and Popularity of Free Downloadable Maps Are Forcing Organisational Rethink on Location Data

Consumer appetite for data driving market need for geospatial Data-on-Demand, forcing rethink on how organisations use and expose geospatial data

Windsor, Berks UK – 15 July 2010 – The groundswell of consumers and citizens becoming more location aware has raised user expectations on consumption and usage of location data, forcing an organisational rethink and driving the need for geospatial data on-demand, according to Pitney Bowes Business Insight, the leading global provider of location intelligence, data management and customer communication management solutions.

Google Maps, Microsoft Bing and free downloadable data from the Ordnance Survey all helped to make maps more savvy and user friendly, but in turn, have also raised consumer expectations on consumption and usage of location data. This rapid, elemental evolution has caught many in the market off guard. GIS vendors, large enterprises, and public sector organisations alike are all suddenly faced with the need to push their location data out to the market and expose it for external use and consumption, rather than internal departmental analysis.

“It took 40 years for mainframe computers to evolve into today’s PCs, laptops, and hand-held devices. By contrast, in just four years, location-based data has become ubiquitous,” said Scott Robinson, Director, Global Data Products, Pitney Bowes Business Insight. ”It is everywhere and is part of our everyday lives – on our phones, in the GPS systems of our cars, in our social networking applications, and even on the geo-tagging of the pictures we post and send online. When information technology that once was available to only the select few becomes available to everyone, it enables the ‘democratisation of data.’  This is what has happened with location-based data. The world is not changing. The world has changed. Many organisations are still coming to terms with what this means for them and how they should rethink the ways they harness and expose location data.”

Like most innovations in IT, response to global consumer demand for location data has resulted in the arrival of new and highly disruptive technologies. Business-to-business customers don’t want to buy big data packages anymore. They want the flexibility and agility to enter, explore and possibly exit different geographies quickly, depending on their business models and processes.

Pitney Bowes Business Insight is addressing this critical requirement for geospatial data on-demand as part of its ground-breaking new Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) solutions, specifically designed to help organisations meet the challenges of the new market demands for location data, and provide an affordable economic delivery model through a centralised iTunes style marketplace. The new DaaS solutions are part of the company’s ongoing initiative of developing solutions that enable organisations to unlock the value of their data assets, and integrate the benefits of location intelligence with the underlying core disciplines of CRM in order to drive deeper insight that improves competitiveness and business performance.