Dotted Eyes News

Dotted Eyes, the data and information solutions specialist, has been experiencing growth in these turbulent times, which in turn speaks volumes for its solutions and service delivery. This record testifies to the lean, proactive and finally sound stance, underpinned by a knowledgeable and experienced workforce. In order to build on this momentum and meet current market demands, Dotted Eyes has taken the next step up in enterprise level capability – hence the hire of Dan Woodrow as Director of Operations. The enterprise level capability 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 and localised decisions. The executive team are pleased to welcome Dan, who joined on 6^th September’10 and reports to Managing Director, Ben Allan.

Dan will lead the development and services functions ensuring provision of high quality, business-effective solutions delivered to customers through a service-based model. This engagement reinforces company strategy in becoming solutions led with a customer centric approach that differentiates Dotted Eyes from the marketplace.

Dan comments: “My goal was to find a growing, innovative organisation which combined a strong commitment to customers to provide sustainable spatial technology solutions and a services-led business model. Dotted Eyes has a track record of supporting customers for the long-term with the latest technological offerings and of delivering the highest levels of service. I am delighted to be joining the team at Dotted Eyes, particularly at a time when there is such as strong demand for operational efficiencies through effective information sharing, in government and in business – a hallmark of the Dotted Eyes brand.”

Dan’s career history spans 27 years and he brings on board a wealth of experience in consulting sales and delivery, within the public and private sectors, both in the UK and abroad. Recent roles have included: Director, Technology Consulting, EMEA and prior to that Director of Professional Services, APAC, at Pitney Bowes Business Insight. Dan’s relevant industry experience will prove invaluable for Dotted Eyes and he holds an exemplary career which boasts sustained consulting business growth through development of strong client relationships combined with step-changes in operational efficiency.

Ben Allan, MD, said: “I am pleased to welcome Dan and look forward to the significant contribution he will make. This appointment represents our commitment to delivering optimal services, value to our customers and focus within the enterprise and public sectors.”

Outside of work, Dan has a busy family life and spends much of his spare time coaching junior rugby and cricket teams in the Gloucestershire area.

New – OpenLayers Training (1 day)

Dotted Eyes is happy to announce that we have now added a new one day training course for OpenLayers to our ‘open source’ training programme.

The first public OpenLayers course is scheduled for December 2010 and is the third and final training course within the new open source training programme that Dotted Eyes are now delivering.  Feel free to attend the whole open source training programme (GeoServer, PostGIS and OpenLayers) or if you simply want to understand how to make the most of OpenLayers then this is a great course for you!

To book any of our training courses go online at www.dottedeyes.com/training. Or if you want more details, please call Craig Dean on 01527 556920.

David Crowther (Training Manager)

Six weeks into deployment and Dotted Eyes’ Contractor Portal saves the National Trust over 300 man hours in serving data to internal staff and subcontractors

Dotted Eyes announces a report from the National Trust that it is reaping considerable rewards in reduced time, cost and resources in serving its internal staff and partner organisations since adopting the Contractor Portal sharing system, this summer.

Launched to great acclaim in July, Contractor Portal was quickly adopted by the National Trust, which recognised its capability for providing hundreds of subcontractors with highly effective self-serve access to both internal and Ordnance Survey (OS) data, whilst delivering automated compliance and critical audit trails.  Specifically, the system is helping this prolific organisation to better manage its vast portfolio of property, events and community engagement directives whilst ensuring up-to-date data access for all internal users and subcontractors.

“Contractor Portal has given us a low-cost, time-saving solution to delivering effective, efficient and accurate location intelligence to the huge number of subcontractors with which we work every day,” said Mike Renow-Clarke, Senior Land and Property Data Officer at the National Trust.

“The simplicity of the system has removed the burden of managing thousands of map users, whilst liberating data access for the tendering process and smaller, short-term projects. Critically, it ensures that our internal MapInfo users and all contractors are accessing the most up-to-date datasets. Based on an average time saving of two hours per data request, when compared to our previous manual data handling process, we estimate that it has freed-up 300 hours since we went live in July and will continue at this level.”

Contractor Portal services the National Trust’s vast network of internal users and subcontractors, whilst managing the flux of tenders and small projects – particularly by consultants.  For example, it enables the review of the potential sites for micro generation of renewable energy which helps the organisation to achieve its goal of a 50% shift from fossil fuels to renewables by 2020.

Hosted by Dotted Eyes, the National Trust Contractor Portal system is served and supported externally, further reducing IT and data management resource requirements, whilst ensuring that datasets are completely up-to-date. It is directly helping the National Trust to deliver on key directives such as local community participation and promoting trails for walking, cycling and kayaking.

“The National Trust is an exemplary customer for Contractor Portal,” said Ben Allan, Managing Director of Dotted Eyes.

“Ultimately the Return on Investment in Contractor Portal is considerable.  With minimal investment, the system addresses several key needs in a single solution: increasing user numbers, minimising data licence management, freeing-up internal resources, facilitating multiple data formats, almost eliminating IT support needs and delivering a critical audit trail.”

As an established data licence customer of Dotted Eyes, the National Trust first saw Contractor Portal being demonstrated early in 2010 at a small workshop prior to its formal launch.  Mike Renow-Clarke was quick to realise its potential for the organisation and become one of the early adopters, alongside a number of local authorities such as Liverpool Direct Limited when it launched this summer.

Contractor Portal is powered by FME, the market leading spatial data transformation software, from Safe Software. This is integrated with Dotted Eyes’ leading mapping interface to provide an intuitive user experience. Contractor Portal is available as a hosted or installed solution, and a flexible licensing model enables costs to be charged back to the end user, as required.

For more information, view our Contractor Portal page, contact the Commercial Team on 01527 556920 or email info@dottedeyes.com.

We’re delighted that Dotted Eyes will be presenting at today’s West Midlands Regional Efficiency and Improvement Programme on Waste Management seminar, attended by all local authorities in the region.

Charlie Gilbert, Associate Director, will be jointly presenting with Kevin Mitchell, Assistant Director of Fleet and Waste Management at Birmingham City Council, on the waste management optimisation project Dotted Eyes has been involved in.

Dotted Eyes will be releasing a white paper on data management issues within waste management. To request a copy please email charlie.gilbert@dottedeyes.com

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.

Dotted Eyes has expanded its range of training courses with the addition of a one day PostGIS training course, starting in October 2010.

The PostGIS course joins Dotted Eyes’ expanding range of open source services and solutions, including GeoServer training and a new Open Source Spatial Starter Kit, which is designed to allow organisations to launch a web mapping application within just one week.

To discuss how open source is a viable alternative to proprietary software, call our Commercial Team on 01527 556920 or email info@dottedeyes.com

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.

Dotted Eyes, the leading GIS specialist, has delivered the first in its new series of open source GIS training courses. Delegates from West Midlands Fire Service received training in the use and administration of GeoServer the leading open source, standards based spatial data publishing platform.

Tim Needham, from West Midlands Fire Service comments, “The training we received from Dotted Eyes has allowed us to replace our heavily-utilised mapping solution with an open source alternative within tight timescales. In the short-term we have seen considerable functional and performance benefits, while the year-on-year cost savings are very welcome in the current financial climate.”

The addition of an open source training capability is a natural step forward for the company which already has considerable experience in supplying open source support and development services to clients, and which uses open source technologies in its own solutions. It also follows on from Dotted Eyes’ popular and free open source seminars which have helped over a hundred delegates understand the benefits of open source.

Ben Allan, MD of Dotted Eyes, comments, “I am delighted that we have been able to add this component to our open source services offering.  We now provide our customers with a comprehensive range of solutions, from top level vendors through to open source technologies, all wrapped in our complete service packages.  This means that our customers can mix and match licensed and open source technology to achieve their optimal GIS environment. Our new Open Source Spatial Starter Kit and our open source courses are key to this. ”

David Crowther, Training Manager at Dotted Eyes, adds, “The GeoServer course will shortly be followed by OpenLayers and PostGIS courses, bringing a complete open source GIS technology stack under the Dotted Eyes training umbrella.”

Anyone interested in open source training from Dotted Eyes should can view the GeoServer training page, or call Craig Dean on 01527 556920.

Dotted Eyes, data and information specialists to the UK public sector and commercial business, today announces that Birmingham Health and Wellbeing Partnership (BHWP) has selected its Health Portal solution to facilitate unprecedented information sharing at every level of the Partnership organisations.

Hot-on-the-heels of the new NHS White Paper release, which focuses heavily on shared information for patients, local authorities and healthcare professionals, the BHWP announcement marks the formal launch of Health Portal, developed by Dotted Eyes to meet the burgeoning need of healthcare professionals to access, visualise and share data through a simple and cost-effective system; freeing up the resources of data analysts and decentralising cumbersome data hubs to deliver access at the point of need.

“In many ways, the key imperatives of the new healthcare reform are already established principles of Birmingham Health & Wellbeing Partnership,” said Jim McManus, Joint Director of Public Health at BHWP.
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Dotted Eyes has launched a new solution to enable customers to set up an open source environment quickly and easily. The Open Source Spatial Starter Kit was developed in response to frustrations voiced by attendees at Dotted Eyes’ open source roadshows who were keen to implement open source but struggled to find the resource to investigate the range of software available.

Dotted Eyes’ Open Source Spatial Starter Kit enables organisations to implement spatial open source without spending valuable time researching and specing a technology stack. The Kit includes pre-selected software, installation, datasets and training. It offers a low risk opportunity to evaluate and deploy a low cost web mapping, spatial data storage and publishing application.  A launch offer includes free technical support for a year for any customers ordering before 1st October 2010.

Dotted Eyes has deployed many open source projects for customers, and uses open source software in some of its own solutions. It has recently expanded its open source capability by launching its first open source training course on GeoServer.

For more information on the Starter Kit, visit www.dottedeyes.com/opensource or call Alistair on 01527 556920.