Vexcel Virtual Earth Appliance

Vexcel Corp. (CO, USA) has made available the Virtual Earth Appliance, designed to bring the data and functionality of the Microsoft Virtual Earth Internet service to the offline customer.

The Microsoft Virtual Earth platform is an integrated set of online mapping and search services that delivers imagery, 2D and 3D geospatial data, and analysis through a Web browser. These same browser-based capabilities are now available behind a customer's firewall, on private or classified networks, and on portable platforms.

The Virtual Earth Appliance is available as an enterprise version, with rackable servers that scale with required storage and the number of users, or as a laptop version with portable, external storage for field or vehicle use. Systems can be configured to support data from a single city, state or region, or to include the entire Virtual Earth global coverage.

Because the Virtual Earth Appliance has the same API and tiling structure as Virtual Earth, customers can integrate their own data, build custom applications or take advantage of the capabilities of Microsoft Corp.'s network of partner companies. As Microsoft's geospatial subsidiary, Vexcel provides Virtual Earth Appliance support and updates, and works with customers to design the optimal solution based on enterprise size, amount of data, mobility requirements, content update frequency and performance requirements.