WeoGeo at the 2009 ESRI User Conference
Well my first day at WeoGeo actually was the first day of the ESRI UC. Nothing like starting out at the most important GIS conference of the year. My first day at WeoGeo also corresponded with WeoGeo’s first time at the ESRI UC itself.
The WeoGeo booth at the ESRI 2009 UC
There has been much written up about the conference, but I thought I’d hit on some of the things that came up at the booth listening to people talk about problems they are having with content management.
First off, clearly everyone knows they can do better with content management. Asking people if they could use help organizing their data is like asking them if they’d like a million dollars. OF COURSE! Sharing data is great and a goal everyone has, but if you can’t get your data organized and figure out which datasets are the latest (or even figure out what was “the latest” last year) you can’t share anything. In fact, I think sharing is the easy part of the equation compared to the management of the spatial data. Of course not everyone can or wants to put their data in the cloud so WeoGeo also offers an appliance that allows you to stick the WeoGeo Library behind your firewalls and keep sensitive data safe.
The other interesting topic that came up was how do you share data in formats that people can consume. Sure, uploading your parcel database is great. Sharing it is great. But allowing people to use the data in software that they are comfortable using is where you really start seeing cost savings. With Safe FME built into the WeoGeo Library and Marketplace, users can transform any dataset into a couple hundred formats. An ESRI ArcGIS user can’t consume GeoJSON without converting it to a Geodatabase first, nor can a AutoCAD user read MapInfo files without converting them to DWG. With the WeoGeo Library, users can request to download those same spatial datasets (Raster or Vector) in any formats you choose to enable.
On top of organizing and sharing data, you also need to set up access to these datasets. Do you want to publish to the world (and maybe monetize them) or do you want to lock them down behind users and groups? Sure you’d love to share data with everyone, but you don’t always own the rights to do so. Being able to grant user access and then take it away when a project is over helps keep that under control.
Of course once your data is loaded into the WeoGeo Library, you can still work with it in many different ways. There is a great RESTful API to allow you to programmatically update users, their groups and their access to datasets as well as work with them while they are there. Everything is scriptable with Python so you can transfer your skills over very quickly to get results from organizing and sharing your data.
So where next? Well if you’d like to try out the Library (which is in private beta), fill out the contact form and we’ll get an invite sent out to you. Browse the wiki to see some of the great features of the Library and Market. Get your data loaded into the Library using the WeoApp or if you are using ArcMap, email me and I’ll add you to our ArcGIS Toolbar beta loader test.
If you are in the Bay Area tonight, come by the WebMapSocial Meetup in Mountain View to see Paul Bissett present the WeoGeo Library and Market and I’ll be presenting at the GeoWeb 2009 conference next week. It was great seeing everyone who had an opportunity to come by the booth and see the demonstration of the WeoGeo Library.
Lastly I just wanted to make sure I posted this video of my son dancing at the Thursday Night celebration. I can only hope YouTube is still around when he brings his prom date home.
This is very interesting indeed. How can I ensure the security of my data? What about data leaks, and other possible threats? How are they handled? It is very hard to entrust your data to someone, especially if the data cost a lot of money.
have you actually been in touch with data vendors? My usual problem with data is that if I buy access to data for 5 machines, I need to make sure the master remains on a disk so it does not take up a license. Is that an issue you are addressing?
@Michalis
The appliance includes unlimited access rights. The library depends on what plan you pay for. This is by login so you could access your data anywhere any time. Since you own the rights to your own data, we don’t limit your access to it, nor your ability to share it with others.
Now buying data, that is a little different issue. You could buy data in the WeoGeo Market and then load it up in your own personal Library and access it on as many machines as you wish as long as the license allows this. Usually that depends on the reseller of data. WeoGeo doesn’t sell data, but enables everyone from individuals to large data sellers the ability to sell their spatial data to anyone. The license would be between you and the provider (like Aerials Express) rather than us. We are like iTunes where we are a marketplace where people can sell their products. We handle payment and distribution, but not the creation nor limitations that people would put on data in our service.
@Michalis,
Data that are hosted with WeoGeo are completely protected from public access. When datasets are ordered, WeoGeo copies the derivative product into a “data escrow” AWS S3 bucket named using a UUID. Access to that bucket is provided via a unique signature and access key with a short expiry time. The key is exposed only after the user who submitted the job authenticates.
For more info on AWS’ security itself, check out their white paper. – http://awsmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/AWS_Security_Whitepaper.pdf
That all being said hosting data with WeoGeo does not obviate the need on content providers’ part to maintain a master copy of their own.
Hi Dan,
One of the big problems with data security at a cloud service provider is what happens if a disgruntled employee decides to release or copy proprietary information. Any data that isn’t encrypted is vulnerable to this threat.
With that in mind, do you have any more info on your data security at WeoGeo? For instance, is proprietary data encrypted before it is stored on S3? How do you manage employee access to your AWS secret key(s)?
James,
I was envisioning something more of a database for me, in the sense of an ArcSDE data store where I would purchase access and use directly from your service rather than downloading a copy. I see i was slightly mistaken, but this is still a very interesting way of dealing with data. This could be the solution most libraries are seeking for hosting data available in a multitude of formats.
Yea we don’t support database formats (SDE, PostGIS, SQLite). You’d publish data out of the Library and into a hosted environment where you’d have your web services. While it is true that FME does support services, we won’t be enabling those out of the library.
Scaling up database products such as SDE can get very expensive in the cloud from a licensing perspective. Open source databases and web services would be cheaper of course, but it isn’t a direction WeoGeo is heading right now.
Apparently Connor gets his looks from his Mom and his dancing skills from Dad.
I have to say yours was the only booth that I was confronted with a survey instead of a sales pitch…still trying to determine if that was a good thing or not.