…from Government Technology…

“…people responsible for enterprise technology worry that the new young Turks and their Web 2.0 advocacy may be as dangerous to enterprise stability as a toddler with a fork waddling toward an electrical outlet.  But the enterprise – or more properly, the federated state and local government environments – is resilient. What were once dismissed as toys are becoming platforms and platform extenders.

“Not long ago, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google Earth and their mapping Web services were dismissed by serious public-sector GIS shops, the stock-in-trade of which was expert GIS systems. Old and new were less competitors than adversaries. That was then. ESRI founder Jack Dangermond told Government Technology in its May issue how things have changed in the relationship between professional GIS and the new public-facing virtualization environments: ‘The public likes this, as they love traditional Rand McNally street atlases or [Autodesk] MapGuide applications. We have been working closely with both of those companies to integrate our tools with theirs.'”

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