3D Terrain Information in the Cloud

Cloud computing has risen from number eleven to three on the CIO's agenda for 2011, according to an independent research report produced by Forrester Research (US).Keeping pace with this rapidly growing trend, Intermap has launched the NEXTMap Web-based store, making the purchase of 3D terrain data as easy as buying a book online.  

Todd Oseth, president and CEO of Intermap tells that with the new NEXTMap Web Store, customers can get a monthly subscription to the data they want or they can still make a one-time purchase. They can access their terrain information instantly from anywhere, the cloud-based approach dramatically reduces the customer's cost of storing, maintaining or disseminating their mapping data, and via the cloud, customers can analyse their data without ever taking physical delivery of it. Doing so, NEXTMap Web Store puts the customer in control, while delivering them simplicity and cost savings.

Four subscription plans are available. NEXTMap Basic facilitates a one-time NEXTMap purchase which is priced per square kilometre. Intermap Basic allows users to upload an area of interest in KML format and purchase the data for an immediate download. Basic is ideal for customers who would like to take possession of static data in smaller areas. NEXTMap Premium consists of a monthly subscription which requires an annual commitment and is priced per user, per county in the United States. NEXTMap Enterprise goes a step further and adds three mapping layers. NEXTMap Custom customers can make use of all the benefits of NEXTMap Enterprise, plus access to six additional high-value custom mapping layers and other tailored services.

Intermap Web Services offers a suite of hosted tools that gives even those unfamiliar with geographic information systems (GIS) the ability to quickly and easily perform terrain analysis based on an area of interest (AOI), county or state. Subscribers to Intermap Web Services can access the Company's 3D terrain information using their current Web browsers, through desktop software like ArcGIS, Global Mapper or SocetGXP, or via an application that leverages the Intermap Web Services software developers kit (SDK).

The NEXTMap Web Store provides open geospatial consortium-based (OGC) services, including Web Map Service (WMS), Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Feature Service (WFS).