Dotted Eyes News

Shared access to asset data and aerial imagery sets the bar for ‘data sharing without frontiers’ in the new climate of local government collaboration

Dotted Eyes, the market leading GeoData and information software specialists, today announces the release of Contractor Portal v2.0, which embraces new imperatives for local government organisations to share internally generated asset data, along with OS and OSNI and wider third party datasets, across a broadening number of partners to deliver on changing local government and related NHS reforms.

Quick to see the unique advantage it offers in serving its partner and contractor relations, Liverpool Direct Limited is deploying Contractor Portal this summer:

“Liverpool Direct Limited’s business case for promoting Contractor Portal within Liverpool City Council is based on sound commercial principles”, said Brian Jones, GeoData Manager, Liverpool Direct Limited.

“When we roll out Contractor Portal this summer it will allow us to provide a responsive service to the City’s partners and contractors whilst reducing costs, decreasing paperwork, helping to eliminate avoidable contact and promoting a self-service approach for external users.  We also plan to extend the use of Contractor Portal beyond the licensing and distribution of digital map data to partners and contractors to the licensing of other digital datasets and also the submission of digital data by contractors to the City.”

Importantly, the new platform provides the ability for the solution to be hosted or installed, whilst the flexible pricing model supports end user and organisation payment options.

Released this week, Contractor Portal v2.0, sets a precedent in supporting an incomparable range of data at a user and cost model previously unknown at time of unparalleled need for partner data sharing. In addition to providing self-service access to data licensed under Collective Purchase Agreements, from Ordnance Survey and other data suppliers, Contractor Portal enables organisations to share their own, internally generated data in a secure environment for the first time.

“Simplification is key to opening up important data access as it enables more people in more organisations to make better decisions,” said Ben Allan, Managing Director of Dotted Eyes.

“That access is critical to meeting the imperatives of localised data sharing inherent in new government drives.  Contractor Portal equips local government organisations to work collaboratively and cost effectively, breaking down traditional barriers, opening up GIS siloes and releasing vital information for sharing across organisations with the minimum of fuss.”

With a long heritage as innovators of software, data and information solutions developed for some 900-plus public and private sector customers in healthcare, local government, not-for-profit and the commercial sector, Dotted Eyes’ mantra is to ‘simplify, automate and integrate’  data and information.  This approach uniquely equips senior and departmental levels of organisations to access, visualise, analyse and share complex data in simple, useable formats to make more cost-effective, locally-relevant decisions.

For information about Contractor Portal and to register interest for the autumn 2010 seminar, visit the Contractor Portal webpage.

On August 11th, Exactrak, the real time vehicle tracking system experts, will allow customers a sneak preview of its new website which features a more modern and function rich mapping component from Dotted Eyes.  The new website is scheduled for an Autumn release.

Exactrak customers can register for the event by calling Exactrack on 01299 250040.

To discuss Dotted Eyes’ custom mapping solutions, please call the Commercial Team on 01527 556920.

Representatives from Dotted Eyes will be attending the AGI Local Public Services Special Interest Group (LPSIG) and Local Government Association (LGA) Seminar on 29th June, in London. The topic for the day is ‘Share to Save: How GI can equip the public sector to do more with less’, a topic which is of interest to all of us!

We’ll be there to support some of our customers, who are presenting, including Simon Hume from Daventry DC, Trevor Foster from Avon IM&T and Duncan Trumper from Herefordshire Council.

The event is free to public sector customers. View the agenda or register online to reserve your place. If you’d like to arrange to meet one of us at the event, please email sales@dottedeyes.com and we’ll be in touch.

You are invited to join our Open Source, Standards and Data roadshow as it continues its travels:

• 27th May, Leeds
• 6th July, Warrington
• 8th July, Taunton

Over 100 delegates have now taken part, and found out the benefits of implementing Open Source technology.
For more information, visit our Events page.

This is the fourth in our popular Open Source, Standards and Data seminar series of 2010. Over 100 delegates have already joined us to dispel the myths around Open Source Software, and find out more about Open Standards and Data.

The event will be held on Thursday 13th May from 9.30am - 2pm, at Swansea University, SA2 8PP. Existing customers and potential customers are all welcome.

View the agenda, and or register here.

Sign up to our email mailing list so you are notified about future events.

Following on from our popular Open Source, Standards and Data events in Birmingham and London, we’re delighted to invite you to the next Open Source, Standards and Data event, to be held in Stirling on 23rd April, 2010.

The event will be held on Friday 23rd April from 9.30am - 2pm.

View the agenda  or register here.

Sign up to our email mailing list so you are notified about future events.

We’re delighted to announce that Dotted Eyes is again co-hosting the free UK FME User Group. It will be held on 29th April 2010, at Ordnance Survey’s offices in Southampton.

Don Murray, Co-Founder of Safe Software, who was described as ‘fantastic, approachable and enthusiastic’ will be joining us once again to give a lively overview of FME 2010.

Over 100 attendees joined us in 2009, and all of them rated the event as being excellent or very good in terms of usefulness. The event is suited to existing users, and those who want to find out more about FME before purchasing.

This year, the event is flanked by optional training on FME Desktop (£800 ex VAT for 2 days)  and FME Server (£400 ex VAT for 1 day).

To find out more view the invitation or the agenda. Registration is available online.

We hope to see you there!

PS Sign up to our email mailing list so you are notified about future events.

PGA members are invited to attend a free workshop run by Dotted Eyes with Landmark Information Group. The session will focus on the use of geographic boundaries for spatial analysis, including MarkerMap REGIONS as supplied to PGA members. The workshop will run from 10:30 to 14:00 on Thursday 26th November at our offices in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. Refreshments and lunch are provided. To sign-up click here or email duncan.hill@dottedeyes.com for more information.

Liverpool Direct, the joint venture company formed by Liverpool City Council and BT, is one of the first customers to sign up for Contractor Portal, the web application for local government organisations that simplifies the distribution of Ordnanace Survey and other datasets to their contractors.

Brian Jones, Geodata Team Manager at Liverpool Direct, said: “Whenever a contractor has to use Ordnance Survey mapping they need to apply for a licence. That requires the contracting body to source and exchange the data and manage the licence application.

“Contractor Portal completely automates that process as it enables the contractor to self-serve.

“We anticipate considerable efficiency savings being generated from this avoidance of contact with contractors. The lighter touch minimises the amount of resource required from my team, freeing us up to do a lot more of our business critical, internally driven GIS work.

“On top of that we will be supplying a much more reliable service that can turn round requests a lot more quickly than before.”

For more information, register for our webinar on 25th September at 10AM or telephone us on 01527 556920.

Those of you out there who have ever been fortunate enough to attend a seminar or conference hosted by Don Murray or Dale Lutz of Safe Software will have some idea of the show that they put on. The 2009 FME International User Conference hosted at Whistler in British Columbia was absolutely no exception…it was informative, cutting edge and above all, great fun!

FME users from around the world gathered at the FME International User Conference from June 11-12, 2009 in Whistler, BC for an interactive and intimate opportunity to explore the theme “Bringing the World Together”. This year’s program provided conference attendees with a valuable opportunity to build their spatial ETL expertise, gain new insights into solving complex spatial data challenges and network with other industry professionals. A packed programme was available to attend which included pre-conference training sessions, 28 technical sessions, 4 hands on workshops, the quick fire ‘lightning talk’ presentations (I was delighted to present one on FME and Unifying the Spatial Environment, featuring access to GIS data from CAD via FDO, access to CAD data from MapInfo and, of course, FME Server) and opportunities to network at the lunch time ‘birds of a feather’ tables. If you had a troublesome task to complete with your data but couldn’t solve it on your own you even had the opportunity to pay a visit to the Safe Software Doctors Office where specialist consultants suitably attired in white gowns with stethoscopes at the ready were available to carry out surgery on your FME Workspaces!

Over 20 countries were represented by more than 110 delegates who all wanted to find out what is new in FME but more importantly seek out new innovative ideas for dealing with their data from examples demonstrated by their contemporaries. Networking is always a big part of Safe’s conference as it provides a unique opportunity to share ideas, successes, lessons learned and best practices. Given Safe’s unique place in the market you also get direct access to personnel from many Safe’s partners, some of the industries software vendors such as Autodesk, Pitney Bowes Business Insight, Oracle, ESRI, Intergraph, Informatica, Microsoft, IBM, Weogeo and many more.

So, for the uninitiated, what does Safe Software actually do? Well, they smash through your data silos to facilitate the free flow of data, that’s what. Interoperability is the name of the game and Safe have been playing their trump card, FME, for some time. With FME you can break down barriers between your data and your applications, translate your data into a more usable format as well as completely transform its schema to make it more fit for purpose.

As far as what’s new in FME… well, the list is somewhat endless. Those of you who have used FME for a little while will be aware that Safe do a very good job of listening to user requests and in the latest release of FME - 2009 - this is borne out by the inclusion of over 430 user requested features as well as yet more formats supported (225+) and even more transformers. The big news about FME 2009 though is that it has 20-20 vision! In general it’s 20% faster, and in some cases up to 20 times faster. In case you’re wondering how these numbers were calculated, they’re the results of Safe’s automated test suite which is run on every new build. Comparing the speed of the 4,000+ tests on FME2008 vs FME2009 the overall speed improvement was 20%. The ones with the most improvements - some of the raster reprojection and interpolation tests - were 20 times as fast as in FME2008. If you want to try it for yourself just go to www.dottedeyes.com/tryfme to download the latest version and give it a go. Don’t expect this to be the end of the performance increases though, at the User Conference Don Murray made the bold statement that every future release of FME will be faster than the last, irrespective of hardware, so we have some exciting times ahead or at least Safe’s development team have!

If you’re interested in forthcoming features then watch out for truly generic reading and writing and dynamic feature types in FME Desktop 2010. But, if your needs scale beyond the desktop and you’re interested in the benefits that FME Server can bring to your organisation you’ll be pleased to hear that FME Server 2010 will bring security as one of its most significant features. All actions in FME Server will be made secure to include Workbench access, web access and all APIs. It’ll ship with basic security and support for JAAS Authentication, LDAP security, Active Directory, Conterra securityManager and support for HTTP Basic and Digest.

If you’d like to know more about anything mentioned here or you have any specific FME questions on a wider topic feel free to email me directly at david.eagle@dottedeyes.com or alternatively visit www.dottedeyes.com/fme for further information on FME itself. Or, you can read Directions Magazine’s review of the Conference here: http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=3195