Other Software and Data

The ability to create your own business processes and rules is essential to “Free Your GIS.”  Opening your spatial data repository that historically has only been consumed on the desktop is the first step. When doing so, you realize the impact the data may or may not have on other departments within your company and were overlap may occur.

CIOs must be mindful of their investment in location-based data and then serve that data in a manner that suits the knowledge worker, not just the GIS users.

“Free Your GIS” in this instance is about minimizing the dependencies that lead to a lock-in situation. As with all modern IT architecture, this requires a layered approach. You want to have a level of flexibility in the data sources, in the logic/business integration, in the client UI and in the implementation options (hosted/on-premise). With a service oriented architecture and some level of orchestration (or even “choreography” as Richard from Gamma mentioned in the Thursday webinar in the context of server-less architecture), you can ensure a loosely coupled architecture that lets you work with best-of-bread components on all layers. 

Excellent point, Colin.

I guess, flexibility is the keyword here. Make sure you don't get your data locked to your software.

Bonus points for working in 'choreography!'

A critical and often overlooked piece of a successful GIS strategy is obtaining the right location data.  Thanks for highlighting the data @Joe.

I think it’s important the CIO include spatial data as part of the organisations data strategy. Often GIS data gets missed, but it’s critical to the success of decreasing cost of ownership. Setting standards and governenance is most important.