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OGC/ISO committees, and on the OGCBoard of Directors.The IONIC deal was just one of threethat the company negotiated to diversifyits product portfolio. The purchase ofAcquis Inc. gave it a foothold in multiusertopological editing, with supportfor mobile, web and rich client desktopenvironments. The acquisition of a thirdfirm, ER Mapper, drew Image WebServer into the ERDAS product line.The latter deal also brought ownershipof ER Mapper Professional to ERDAS,strengthening its presence in the remotesensing image processing arena. ERMapper Professional is now co-marketedalong with the existing three-tier suiteof ERDAS IMAGINE tools.Senior Vice President of ProductManagement and Marketing, MladenStojic explained that the companywill adhere to a multi-phased developmentplan aimed at solidifying itspresence in the enterprise market.Phase One commenced earlier thisyear with the release of ERDAS ImageManager, a tool that addressesthe challenge of discovering, describing,cataloging and serving imagedata. See .Phase Two will extend thissame functionality into a morefully consolidated package consistingof three elements: the OGC/ISO-compliant enterprise applicationERDAS Apollo, a geo-portaltoolkit customers can use todevelop custom Web applications, andan integrated Web client that will permitthe completion of geospatial workflowsin a browser format. Full integrationof vector topology in the company’score products, and improvements in theautomation of support for on-demandgeoprocessing, are among the goals targetedin Phase Three. Finally, ERDAShopes to refine its geospatial platformby developing market-focused solutionsthat address specific needs identified bymembers of its partner network. Particularfocus will be directed towardthe resolution of issues in the utilities,natural resources, defense and oil/gassectors.ERDAS emphasizes how geospatialinformation can increase in value as itevolves through the progressive stagesof authoring, management, sharing anddelivery. Last year’s ERDAS TITANnetwork debut was something of afunctional glamorization of the datasharing phase. TITAN is an online solutionthat permits the discovery, visualizationand retrieval of geospatial datawithin a secure environment. Desktopand Internet applications, as well asthree-dimensional virtual globes, maybe used to display content interactivelyand collaboratively, and users are encouragedto create personal, permissions-controlled“MyWorld” spacesinto which they can upload geospatialdata for others to view. With this controlledstructure, ERDAS is offering adata sharing environment that ensuresthe protection of digital ownershiprights. See on page 33.ITT’s ENVI updates bring new automatedworkflows and data integrationoptions for ESRI’s ArcGIS. ENVI 4.4delivers new functionality that streamlinesimage analysis workflow (such asworking with vector layers, pan sharpeningimages and performing change detection)and provides advanced spectralprocessing and analysis capabilities.ENVI 4.5 delivers seamless integrationof ENVI and ArcGIS, for file exchangebetween the ENVI and ArcGISgeodatabases. It delivers direct access tothe full suite of map composition toolsavailable with ESRI’s ArcMap, providinga complete image processing workflowfrom data access and analysis, to acompleted map product. Image processingand analysis done in ENVI can thenbe launched in ArcMap from withinENVI to generate reports and map compositions.In Seattle, LizardTech engineers havededicated themselves to slimming thecumbersome heft of geospatial files inthe interests of optimized workflow, reducedstorage requirements and speedierimage delivery to internal and onlineusers. Early this year the firm releasedGeoExpress 7, its newest version of theapplication customers use to shrink giantraster files by as much as 95 percentusing LizardTech’s patented mrSID compressionformat. See .“Not only can you compress thoseimages, but you can take existing imagesand you can combine them togetherinto larger datasets,” explainedSenior Product Manager Jon Skiffington.“So a typical workflow for one ofour customers might be that they havea thousand GeoTiff files and they wantto combine those over to one large imageand maybe project it to a coordinatesystem, or maybe do some color balancingand then compress. They can do allthat in GeoExpress very easily.”In a fully implemented LizardTechstorage and server network, two additionalproducts would be installed—Spatial Express for storage and ExpressServer for image delivery—and GeoExpresswould act as a command center to34IMAGING NOTES // S UMMER 2008 // WWW.IMAGINGNOTES.COM