Geo-Content Tools Available For Google Maps
Orange, CA - SRC LLC announced it will immediately release to the development community a highly integrated set of tools designed to add enhanced business intelligence functionality with Google Maps. As Google finds growing success with its' open source application programming interface (API) mapping platform, developers from around the world have built an incredible number of consumer facing applications. SRC, through the availability of its' AllocateTM API, intends to give business application developers what they have been missing when considering developing a mashup – namely enabling geo-content for their business intelligence applications.
"Google has found a tremendous market opportunity amongst the pent-up demand of Web developers seeking to build map applications via its easy-to-use, open source API," said Dean Stoecker, SRC President and CEO. "This could very well represent the map ubiquity the GIS industry has been pursuing for years. As a preeminent worldwide developer of system tools and platforms for business intelligence solutions, SRC is in a position to leverage our expertise to take what is possible today in consumer facing mashups and apply it to business-to-business applications. Our intelligent Allocate engine and API make it easy for developers to integrate critical geographically-based content like demographics, segmentation, sales data and the like, with the popular web mapping APIs."
The enthusiasm in the developer community surrounding mashups, or map hacks as sometimes referred, didn't materialize until this past summer when Google, Yahoo and Microsoft allowed developers to begin using their APIs. As Google and Yahoo offered their open source API free of charge with certain use limitations, mashups sprung up on the Web in great numbers. Today, a variety of consumer facing applications can be found on the Web in many different categories, such as Current Events, Transit and Transportation, City Information, Mobile and Wireless, Housing and Real Estate, Recreation and Fitness, Events and Sports, Travel and Tourism, Blogs and Websites, Crime and Sex Offenders, Games and much more.
SRC has seen this phenomena quickly progress. Seeing an opportunity to add more value to the Developer community by offering a set of tools which would add business intelligence with the mapping component, it has tested and verified its Allocate business intelligence tool kit for use with Google and other mapping APIs. Allocate uses its own flexible API to accept requests from a variety of mapping tools and instantly return XML geo-content for any spatial object. As a result, there is tight integration between the two APIs resulting in a seamless, comprehensive, and powerful business solution that enables fast, efficient and easy application development.
"The Allocate/Google maps integration was really quite easy as both products have powerful capabilities that are well documented" said Ian Erickson, CEO of AnalyGIS. "With the proper licensing from SRC, Google and Google's content providers, the extent of business intelligence solutions with these tools is almost endless." AnalyGIS, a value-added partner of SRC, developed the "proof-of-concept" web application as a way to demonstrate the utility and flexibility of the Allocate API.
Allocate is country, geography and data independent. Developers using the Allocate API with their preferred mapping API will receive all the benefits of Allocate and to develop a host of business mashups, including maps with business intelligence incorporating census and market data, market drive times, competitive information, real estate details, corporate area sales volumes, corporate or competitive sales territories, telecommunications grids and signals, and much more.
SOURCE: SRC