FME Server is barely in the 5 figure range (by that I mean it is very close but not quite in the 4 figure range — so its at that end of the scale). I’m not sure if this qualifies as a strategy you don’t like, but in general we’re pretty happy to let folks just try our software out with no strings attached — drop us a line at info@safe.com if you’d like to dig deeper.

Dale

It seems appropriate to mention that CamptoCamp has released their Version 1.1 of the Spatial Data Integrator, which is of course based on Talend Open Studio 2.2.4.

Granted its not quite as mature as FME but its considerably cheaper (FREE) and all of the other perks of FOSS.

Good timing as usual!!

Perhaps I will do that soon.

I have been reading your blog for several years now and I guess this is the first time I discover that you are not only an ArcGIS blogger, but also an FME Fan, which makes me quite happy. I use FME every day in addition to ArcGIS and it is certainly the most powerful tool out there to manipulate data coming from different vendors and streamline it into your production environment or the other way round.

It’s all about the data and the price is really not an issue. A standalone FME Pro licence is in the same price range than ArcView, but it has much more “geoprocessing” possibilities than ArcView has.

If your business is about treating data, and not making maps, FME is much more useful than ArcView (or Manifold or whatsoever).

After the treatment in FME, you can use the mapping software you want to make your beautiful looking map.

That’s the power of being able to write > 200 formats out of FME, vector and raster, combine the two, send them as KML network links into GE or import them into your SDE, SQL Server, MySQL, PostGIS, Oracle Spatial and so much more …

There is certainly no other tool on the market giving you the same flexibility to manipulate data in a graphical drag and drop editing environment than FME Workbench.

For those who don’t know FME, try out the 15-days-eval licence available on http://www.safe.com. It could change your life!

I’ll be at the FME User conf and try to keep you updated in some ways.

It’s a shame you will not be there, James.
Would have been fun …

One button scripts, data QA/QC, locating bad spatial data, corrupted file recovery, automated reformatting of data from the “glass house”, data standardization, workflow automation, and yes, conversation of extremely crappy CAD data to something usable in GIS… any GIS! Yep, our copy was about $3K, worth every penny, and finding more uses every day — JC

One of the biggest advances to FME was the addition of the Workbench. Translations and work flows are now visual with drag-and-drop features. There are even Python extensions for additional processing that can’t be done with FME transformers.

Sometimes we’ll get a few snooty ESRI types that boastfully mention that their data is only in a geodatabase, SDE, BinGrid, blah, blah–thinking that there’s no way for us to view or edit their data. Safe and FME have made ‘GIS’ more about the data itself, not the GIS software.

The point is, you can’t normally say whether or not you are “in a position” to purchase software without knowing the price.

Kudos for the topic James. We’ve actually been looking at adding FME to our exisitng DataInterop license.

I just wanted to respond to the comments on pricing for FME. I have a quote (I think from our president Don Murray) which sums it up for us…

“Customers often focus on the lowest price – rather than the project requirements! We’d sooner help a customer to get the correct software – which is often the low-cost option anyway – than have them feel bad about something that doesn’t do what they need”

The other reasons we don’t display prices on the web site are that the price can vary with the type of license (fixed/floating) the number of licenses, the levels of licensing, the billing currency etc, plus we have a global network of resellers, and price can vary with local conditions.

I hope this helps to explain. You should be able to get a quote simply by emailing sales@safe.com or call on 1-604-501-9985 x287 (our sales team loves to talk to people!) and if you ever feel that an email we send you is spam then let us know because the last thing we want is to annoy potential customers!

See you all at the conference(?)

I suppose I could see them putting the price of FME Stand Alone up there for reference. It isn’t as expensive as you might think. We’ve used it with great success in connecting datasets and performing analysis on them. We do have 2 licenses of Manifold.net so it isn’t like I can’t appreciate where you are coming from.

FME works very nicely with Manifold to be honest. Anyone who uses FME can attest to how it frees you up to focus on your results.

Shame you can’t be at the conference James. I’ll email you a little bit to tell you what we are doing. You might be interested.

Not a sniff of a price on the interwebs.

Just to point out something glaring here. I used to consider AllPointsBlog as a source to the direction of GIS, but no longer. Its you. Take for example today. You’ve got a great post about Spatial ETL and they’ve got one about mittens.

WTF do any of us care about mittens for?