Interview: ERDAS - Defining the Measurement Process
Written by Jeff Thurston
Remotely sensed imagery is rapidly evolving to become a primary and important information source for business decision making.To achieve this goal requires an understanding of the process involved and the right tools. V1 Magazine editor Jeff Thurston spoke with Bob Morris, President and CEO, ERDAS Inc. on this topic and how that company is meeting the challenge in the international marketplace.
V1:ERDAS is celebrating a birthday. Can you tell us a bit about the
company history to date?
Morris: Yes – it is 30 years
this year! The company originally began in 1978 as an outgrowth from
work being done at Georgia Tech University. Lawrie Jordan III, Bruce
Rado and Nick Faust began the company and operated it independently
until Leica Geosystems acquired it in early 2001.
I joined
Leica Geosystems in late 2000 to manage the GPS/GIS business, which
ultimately became part of the GIS & Mapping Division and included
ERDAS and LH Systems which were acquired after the formation of the
division.
V1:What were
things looking like when you arrived?
Morris: Leica
Geosystems, through its acquisitions and various incarnations was a
180 -year-old company. As a part of Leica Geosystems, we were
bringing ERDAS into a wider geospatial company. Leica Geosystems was
transitioning from a sensor only company to include a considerably
broader software side as well. Six years later, Hexagon acquired
Leica Geosystems in its entirety.
Over the last two years
under Hexagon, we have evolved further, changing the company name to
the new ERDAS, acquiring several key geospatial software companies
and growing as a part of Hexagon’s measurement technologies group.
V1:Our
observation is that ERDAS has evolved more fully into a processing
and distribution company, is that an accurate observation?
Morris: I would characterize our
evolution as becoming a focused software company developing
comprehensive desktop and enterprise platforms from which we are able
to provide specific vertical solutions and comprehensive web
services. As ERDAS, we are clearly focusing on the entire geospatial
information value chain from sensors to delivery.
V1:At
the time of the Hexagon acquisition, the company spoke about
different scales of measurement. Now that some time has passed, how
have those concepts been integrated into the new ERDAS?
Morris: You are referring to
Hexagon’s view of the various measurement regimes…. nano, micro
and macro-technology.
ERDAS fits primarily in the
macro-technology environment. Our software solutions are able to
consume data efficiently from each of the macro sensors produced by
Leica Geosystems for seamless data ingestion to a variety of
information products.
V1: How
is ERDAS “defining the processes” for measurement to business?
Morris: The traditional view of
remote sensing has been largely science oriented. We are interested
in breaking down the silos to work toward more enterprise oriented
approaches and build on the appetites for geo-content that Google and
Microsoft have helped create.
Our goal is to connect deployed
business systems with geo-content without being solely identified as
a science, remote sensing or GIS company. Beyond measurement, we are
connecting the Earth with business information. At ERDAS, we help
organizations harness the information of the changing Earth for
greater advantage, by creating Geospatial Business Systems that
transform our Earth's data into business information.
Over the last two years under Hexagon,
we have evolved further, changing the company name to the new ERDAS,
acquiring several key geospatial software companies and growing as a
part of Hexagon’s measurement technologies group.
V1:What are your thoughts about
standards and interoperability?
Morris: Our company is
developing products that are based on standards, with the goal of
improving interoperability. We want to allow users to connect and use
complex technologies through standardized and simpler interfaces that
support their business and IT needs. Companies in any industry need
to make technologies and products work together when they seek to
integrate information systems from different divisions or
subsidiaries, or when they purchase new software that must be made to
work with diverse systems already in use within the company.
OGC Web Service standards, along with
ISO standards, are the dominant standards used for deploying
geospatially enabled Web services. Through OGC standards, different
geospatial software systems and system components can work together
over a network, usually the Internet. Without
standardization, an enterprise's applications operate independently,
segmenting geospatial data and limiting organizations to only
authoring within a single software package. Through vendors'
implementations of OGC standards in products, organizations may
author, manage, connect and deliver geospatial information internally
and externally through a wide variety of applications.
Interoperability among diverse products provides customers with
increased value and versatility, and it provides vendors with more
strategic options.
As a Strategic Member of the OGC and
actively involved in ISO, ERDAS continues to demonstrate its
commitment to interoperability. ERDAS is part of the OGC Technical
Committee, Planning Committee, Architecture Board, Board of Directors
and various ISO TC211 committees. Additionally, ERDAS is continually
enhancing the company's technological developments to provide more
extensive enterprise solutions to the larger marketplace. ERDAS is leveraging its standards-based
interoperability, offering image processing, exploitation and sensor
expertise to the larger OGC/ISO vendor community, and collaborating
to provide our customers with multi-vendor, fully interoperable
enterprise solutions.
V1:
Can you provide more information on IMAGINE Objective?
Morris: We think that powerful
information extraction technologies can provide a broad range of
geospatial information, which can then be fused with other business
information. Imagery definitely plays an integral role in providing
useful information for business decision making. Fusing location
based data with imagery helps drive the automated feature extraction
process. IMAGINE Objective provides object-based multi-scale image
classification and feature extraction capabilities for building and
maintaining accurate geospatial content. With IMAGINE Objective,
imagery and geospatial data of all kinds can be analyzed to produce
GIS-ready maps.
V1:Is that process fully automated then?
Morris: We have automated the
feature extraction process, based on the employed
feature model. IMAGINE Objective’s collection of intuitive
tools enable the authors of feature models to create custom workflows
that then allow for wall-to-wall automated feature extraction. The
alignment, fusion and synthesis of information are what we are
working towards. If we can bring all of these together, then better
decision-making can take place.
V1:Today society faces many issues like higher food production costs,
climate change and sustainability. Where do you see ERDAS’ role
under these conditions?
Morris: Different companies
define different goals in different ways. We see a changing world
where people need access to information acquired under changing
circumstances that will enable them to make up-to-date business
decisions. The role of our business is to produce solutions that
transform raw data into information that identifies and describes
those changes. Because the Earth is always changing, there is a need
to identify, manage and analyze this change – a Geospatial Business
System provides the tools necessary to do this, enabling businesses
to make more effective decisions. ERDAS is known throughout the
industry for its understanding of change, providing the most advanced
tools for tracking the Earth’s changes and transforming data into
useable information (available in desktop, enterprise, web and mobile
environments) for the swiftest responses.
V1:ERDAS has become more involved in the processing and distribution of
information. Can you explain this more fully?
Morris: At the end of the day,
our technologies help put information in front of people. To apply
our interoperable service oriented architecture (SOA) to business,
many users want to consume information in the context of a service.
ERDAS TITAN is an online network for
sharing data. This solution enables the sharing of
geospatial data and web services with users and communities internal
and external to an organization. ERDAS TITAN offers powerful
features for discovering, visualizing and ultimately consuming
geospatial data and web services. This 3D environment supports users
and organizations that want to make their geospatial data available,
while retaining digital ownership rights.
V1:You
have your feet in the water already in that way. I am thinking of IGN
in France, for example, who are using your technology. This raises
the issue of supporting projects like INSPIRE in Europe.
Morris: We do. The real question
becomes implementation, which includes all of the plumbing and tools,
as well as the capability to manage the system, which we are
currently working on. We are working on a better understanding of
how these systems can operate through these types of services.
The French National Geographic
Institute (IGN) selected ERDAS Catalog 3.0 to build and maintain a
catalog of geospatial resources. With this catalog, the IGN will
fully handle visualization requests made by end-users through the
Géoportail.fr. ERDAS Catalog meets IGN’s in-house
cataloguing needs, with the ability to feed the Géoportail.fr
with interoperable geospatial resources. In addition, the solution’s
OGC/ISO compliance, including catalog services (CS-W) and access and
visualization services (WMS), equips IGN to fulfill their geospatial
digital broadcast strategy. The OGC/ISO compliance enables IGN to
provide Géoportail.fr partners with strong interoperability
and performances meeting national spatial data infrastructure (SDI)
requirements.
Our goal is to connect deployed
business systems with geo-content without being solely identified as
a science, remote sensing or GIS company. Beyond measurement, we are
connecting the Earth with business information.
V1:Do you see this type of approach
as being useful for supporting SDI?
Morris: Absolutely. It is very
much at the root of what we are doing. There is a growing need for
standards-based geospatial data management solutions, deploying SDI
and managing the lifecycle of enterprise data. When enhanced with
OGC/ISO interoperability, these solutions fully equip users, making
systems more flexible and accessible, therefore driving ROI for the
enterprise. Providing government organizations and private companies
the ability to deploy SDI is the root of where ERDAS is focusing its
efforts.
V1:Where do you see ERDAS in terms of digital 3D cities?
Morris: It is about representing
reality. This will require digitally rich content, and 3D digital
cities remain the Holy Grail. Digital Earth representations provide
the snapshots of information businesses need to be more effective—the
authoring, managing, connecting and delivering solutions within the
Geospatial Business System cater to individual and comprehensive
Digital Earth needs.
In ERDAS TITAN, we provide the tools
needed to build a personalized Digital Earth. Users can create a
geographically enabled personal space, where they can upload their
data, set permissions and share content with other network users. An
individual’s personal space within ERDAS TITAN is called a MyWorld.
V1:What are your thoughts about real-time information?
Morris: This depends upon how
one defines real-time. Simply put, people want more up-to-date
information, quicker. We are seeing information products being
delivered from data flows get ever closer to the actual data
acquisition effort.
V1: Do
you see differences for your business around the world?
Morris: It is fair to say that
developing nations are developing solutions in different ways and in
many cases in a more accelerated fashion. Some regions are
considerably more mapped than others and in many, the base problems
are different. This simply requires a broader set of solutions to
address the various issues at hand.
V1: How
are the changes at ERDAS going and what is the feedback you have
received to date?
Morris: The feedback has been
very positive. The approach we have been taking has been built on
the strength of the ERDAS name. Even under the Leica Geosystems name, people often referred to us as ERDAS. We've always had a strong
image analysis presence, but now people are learning to refer to us
as the 'Earth to Business' company. We've had a lot of affirmation to
address business problems with our geospatial technology and
solutions.
V1: What
is your relationship to Leica Geosystems and Hexagon today?
Morris: Nothing has changed….we
are still part of the Leica Geosystems world and share a place in the
macro group within Hexagon. Only our name has changed to better
reflect our value proposition to the market and to clearly
differentiate our competencies in software from the strong reputation
of Leica Geosystems and Hexagon in measurement sensors.
V1:Do
you see a shortage of skilled labour today?
Morris:
On a regional basis, there are certainly shortages developing,
particularly in select skill sets. On a global scale, not
necessarily. There are a number of competencies that are more
competitive than others to attain. The good news is that with
companies like Google and Microsoft bringing geospatial information
and tools to the attention of broader audiences, young people today
regularly see the relevance of geospatial through a number of
vehicles.
ERDAS has a long history of providing
software to colleges and universities worldwide, enabling higher
education to train students with knowledge and a deeper appreciation
and understanding of how advanced geospatial technology can be
applied to solve a wide range of business problems. This ideally
helps foster the desire to enter into geospatial careers.
----------------------------------------------------------- Bob
Morris, President & CEO, ERDAS Inc.
With extensive experience in developing
new businesses and product lines, Morris also has a broad
knowledge of the geospatial industry and markets. His career began in forestry
with various technical production and engineering roles, continuing into
the private surveying and civil engineering sector. In 1990, he moved
into product development for surveying, mapping and GIS solutions.
Morris has held various senior positions in development, marketing and
management with leading industry manufacturers including Trimble, Sokkia
and Point. He joined ERDAS (then Leica Geosystems) in November 2000 as
Vice President of GIS, later becoming President and CEO. Morris
holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry from Humboldt State
University.
Remotely sensed imagery is rapidly evolving to become a primary and important information source for business decision making.To achieve this goal requires an understanding of the process involved and the right tools. V1 Magazine editor Jeff Thurston spoke with Bob Morris, President and CEO, ERDAS Inc. on this topic and how that company is meeting the challenge in the international marketplace.