Unlocking Business Value with Open Source GIS
It has been estimated that 50 to 80 percent of modern enterprises aren’t using their location data to aid in making business decisions. And yet, the global geographic information system (GIS) market is anticipated to reach $14.6 billion by 2020, signaling massive opportunities for growth. At the same time, organizations are moving away from proprietary software and the burden of single-vendor lock-in towards more flexible and budget-friendly open-source solutions. The concurrent rise in GIS and open source is creating new ways for organizations–to make the most of the geospatial data at their disposal and turn it into actionable insights, particularly those in the fields of energy, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, finance and government.
Proprietary geospatial software generally consists of subscriptions that determine how many data sources can be considered and how much it will cost to determine optimal routing. Open-source geospatial software, on the other hand, allows organizations to leverage geospatial data without incurring per-user, per-login or per-CPU cycle costs. Additionally, users are not penalized for increasing their number of users or conducting as much analysis as is required to determine ideal routing. The most prominent benefits of open-source software include the following.
There is a common misconception that open-source software is free due to the lack of licensing costs, but it’s important to note that there are costs associated with transitioning to open-source environments, namely supporting and maintaining the software. These costs are typically only a fraction of the licensing costs accrued with proprietary solutions. Moreover, open source doesn’t penalize for scaling architecture up or out, so companies can grow freely without worrying about soaring costs in the future.
Relying on a single vendor decreases the ability to negotiate pricing, especially if no alternative comparable technology is available. Since open-source solutions are often used in congruence, vendors have incentive to price competitively which, in turn, saves businesses money.
Open-source technology is proliferating modern IT enterprises, enabling virtualized infrastructure, containerization and software automation. Open-source geospatial software is specifically designed to operate in these modern architectures, with many packages offering cross-platform support.
Arguably one of the most important benefits of open source is the resilience and continuity it promotes within an organization. Creating projects in an open framework gives teams the transparency and flexibility to pick up where others have left off to ensure that projects get completed. There are more eyes on any given project, which means a better chance of finding and fixing potential bugs before they happen.
What Can GIS Do for You?
Currently, more data is being generated than ever before; every two days we create as much data as we did from the beginning of human existence up until 2003.
