Volume 27 • No 01 • 2004
ISSN 0742-468X • Since 1978
On-line Since 2000
Intergraph To Track
Bill Gates’ Sewage
Right off the bat you know that no one at Intergraph wrote that headline. Nonetheless, it is true.
Love him or hate him, there is no doubt that Bill Gates has transformed the IT industry into a daily necessity of life. When it comes to GIS, however, the folks at Redmond Washington, have barely gotten their feet wet. So, one must wonder if they will, and will they do it on their own, or just gobble up someone else.
The answer is …
I have no idea. But I do know that the first major GIS companies to embrace the WinTel platform was Intergraph. With that in mind I could not help but to notice who Microsoft’s home town of Redmond turned to for GIS support to flush away Gates’ waste. Sure enough, it was none other than Intergraph.
So what does that mean? Probably nothing in terms of how Microsoft will get into the GIS game. On the other hand, Redmond is a savvy IT community, so this engagement cannot hurt Intergraph (assuming they perform).
Public Works Manager
The City of Redmond. Washington is home to about 46, 000 people, but that number doubles with the work–day commuters rushing to make another fortune. Hidden under the ground of every major city are the unsung efforts of the Public Works department. Among other things, they bring in clean water, and take away dirty water.
The Public Works Department of the City of Redmond, Washington chose Intergraph’s Geospatial Resource Management (GRM) (http://imgs.intergraph.com/solutions/) solutions to help improve delivery of its public services – water and sewer. Using GeoMedia® Public Works Manager, the city will replace its legacy
AM/FM system with a data–centric GRM system that links to the city’s other corporate systems, including customer information and asset management systems.
According to Intergraph, “The integration between the new GeoMedia/Microsoft® SQL
Server-based environment and other systems will enable city employees across
departments to access data and directly update data one time for all of
their purposes, whether it is for billing, permitting or additional daily
tasks.”
Why a new system?
“Besides quickly providing the city with numerous financial benefits, the
ability to link to other corporate systems will increase efficiency by
giving users access to a more complete set of information that is available
across our enterprise,” said Melissa Faga, GIS Manager, City of Redmond.
“The new system will allow us to easily adapt to our growing infrastructure
and assets and respond more promptly to our growing customer base.”
Streamlining engineering workflows for routine maintenance and upgrades
New demands such as increased maintenance and updates to public systems
combined with increased customer requests prompted city officials to explore
various ways to streamline their daily workflows. Besides efficiencies
gained for management and administration operations, the new system will
give the department a foundation for engineering flow analysis. In addition
to supporting typical design and drafting workflows, the new implementation
will allow city engineers to use the network model for input to hydraulic
analysis programs, such as DHI MOUSE. The network model will now be
maintained in one department, eliminating redundant data entry.
The implementation is scheduled to be completed by May 2004.
Conclusion
Whether Microsoft will get more deeply involved in GIS, only Microsoft knows for sure. If they do, it is anybody’s guess whether they will buy a major player, build up a smaller company, or just do it on their own.
Considering ESRI’s strong hold on the municipal market and the water/wastewater market, I think that Intergraph can rightly put a big feather in its cap. Having their system in the heart of desktop IT should be used as an Intergraph showcase. Now it is up the people at Intergraph to make sure the system works as promised. Or better!
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