The core competencies of the WhereGroup are consultancy, conceptual design, implementation and operation of dynamic, standardised geospatial solutions cover­ing the full project cycle, from design to building and operation. Customer applications range from mapping services, such as interactive city maps, monitoring systems and geoportals, to more complex solutions for logistics, tourism, agriculture, and risk management.

Responding to Change
The company is the result of a recent merger between three companies: Geo-Consortium, CCGIS and Karta.Go. The latter two were initially software vendors, one of SICAD Software, the other as an ESRI partner. Our history goes back to 1998. For the first five years, while selling software licences, we watched as the market for proprietary software narrowed. A new business model was sought, and this was found in open-source software. In 2003 we began switching our business model towards services and consultation concerning free software. Since then the market for open-source technology (not only in the geospatial sector) has grown significantly and steadily. According to the majority of market analysts, this trend will continue for many years. In most markets, software is losing the character of a product and is increasingly becoming a service. The market for web-based GIS solutions is dominated by open-source. The licence fees are only one argument for this, and surely not the strongest.

Push but Stay Fun
The founders and owners of The WhereGroup and its predecessors are Arnulf Christl, Dietmar Fleisch­hauer, Olaf Knopp and Peter Stamm, all trained as geographers at the University of Bonn. To date the company employs about 25 professionals: geographers, (geo-) information scientists, biologists and archaeologists. These work in development, consulting, know-how transfer, marketing and administration. The company is structured in four main divisions: Development, Project Handling, Training and Administration. From the beginning, the main focus has been on consultation for geospatial solutions, standardis­ation and the use of open-source software in spatial-data infrastructures (SDI). Our mission is to produce high-quality solutions for GISs, pushing the use and development of open-source software while keeping the fun in the work we do. We can look back on constant financial growth over recent years. Sited at the bifurcation of two fast-growing businesses - geoinformation and open-source business - we aim at a volume of about Euro2 million in 2008.

No Market Restrictions
Our services are not restricted to any particular type of organisation, and as a result our target markets are very heterogeneous. Our scope is to bring any kind of spatially related data into decision-making processes and thereby increase their quality. This may involve land-use maps as well as marketing figures. All projects have in common visualisation ofa geospatial reference in the data. This is not limited to the classical geo-related business; sometimes we are surprised at the business sector in which GIS proves useful. Our customers include several Euro­pean governments at municipal, regional and state level, research institutes and a growing range of international enterprises, including customers from the Netherlands to Greece and from Switzerland to Brazil. Our engagement in international organisations such as the Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO or the Open Geospatial Consortium OGC, of which our company is a principal member, has been a great engine. Some European countries, such as Italy, France and Switzerland, seem to be enforcing the use of open-source software in public administration. Overall, the use of free software is growing throughout Europe. And the US? Some of the most popular open-source GIS products, such as UMN MapSer­v­­er, GDAL and PostGIS, are made in the US, but a proverbial Grand Canyon seems to yawn between production and use. Nevertheless, we have access to a broad range of companies developing free geo­spatial software in the US and Canada. We work together with a lot of companies around the world, exporting and importing knowledge and services, such as consulting and programming.

Webalisation
For companies in Europe and Northern America the fastest growing markets are no longer at home. The growth markets have moved to Asia, especially to China and India, where about one third of the global population now lives. And this shift forces compan­ies to think about new strategies. But there is no doubt that home markets are still on the increase. The German market, for example, has shown measurable growth over the last five years; the economy is stable and will probably remain so for some years to come. But the markets of the future are arising in the east. Globalisation is abstract but the internet is a reality. The web is one of the biggest revolutions in modern times, especially for the software industry. Microsoft became huge by selling software; they had the business model for the PC Age. But what about Google? How could a company grow so fast and become so big in just a few years? The answer is that they had the business model for the web. Do they sell software? Well… globalisation and webalisation are the trends, and this means most software companies will come to sell fewer products and more service.

Move to Mass Market

Looking at GIS software of some ten years ago is like visiting an archae­ological site. The change has been immense: from huge, expert systems on huge, expert hardware, to consumer car navigation. What will be the trends for the coming five to ten years? The connection to the mass market is one of the major developments. GIS is no longer an expert system, and geodata will no longer be expert information. Earth Viewers, such as Google Maps and Microsoft’s Visual Earth, have proved that geoinformation is a vehicle for the mass market; geoinformation is not the product itself, but a basis upon which other products can be sold. Our research activities aim at improving useful standardis­ation, developing mobile devices for geo-solutions and satisfying the growing demand for 3D (and 4D) solutions. And combining GIS with standard web techniques like CMS, RSS feeds, Wiki technology and other basic tools. Geodata for all.

Future Targets
Our financial targets for the coming years are to keep up healthy growth rates, which would result in doubling figures. Our professional target is to develop and improve open-fsource business models, and surely we can learn more about them too. Expanding our target markets in Europe and Asia is another challenge for the next five years. And, last but not least, we want to keep the fun and enthusiasm for the work we do.