 Media attention highlighting climate change and growing greenhouse gas emissions
have brought the problems facing our planet right into our living rooms. We know
about the melting of the polar ice caps, and the subsequent rise in sea level which
threatens to obliterate small island countries like the Seychelles, and flood our
coastlines. We know about volatile weather conditions bringing storms, floods,
heat waves and drought. We know that natural disasters are on the increase, that
fragile ecosystems will degrade and human beings will suffer. Never before has
there been such a need for geospatial information. For companies like ERDAS, Inc.
with solutions for monitoring, managing, connecting and delivering geospatial
information, the opportunities in today's changing world are tremendous.
 Established in 1978 as the Earth Resource
Data Analysis System (ERDAS) the
company has its roots in image analysis
through using remote sense imagery to
perform high end scientific analysis of
the earth's resources. At its inception
ERDAS developed different products to
process satellite imagery into land maps
for deforestation and to assist in locating
oil reserves, paving the way for the
company's flagship product, ERDAS
IMAGINE, which is today a suite designed
to scale with a customer's geospatial
production needs. The company's
President, Joel Campbell, claims IMAGINE
is the market leading image processing
software package in the world serving
the needs of around 20.000 customers or
more. Appointed President of ERDAS in
January 2010, Campbell has over 20 years
of experience in the geospatial industry
working as a speaker and lecturer for
many organisations and serving in
various senior roles in sales, business
development and product management
for GeoEye, Definiens, EarthData and
ESRI, as well as for his own consultancy.
"Since I joined ERDAS our focus has been
on trying to gather more customer
feedback," he says. "By discovering the
real needs and requirements we can
begin to build products that specifically
address those needs. I think the changes
that I have made are less visible on the
outside and more visible on the inside.
There have been some organisational
changes to be a more customer facing,
efficient and market driven organisation.
We have tried to address new markets
and introduce new products. Our first
release this year was LPS eATE, or
enhanced automatic terrain extraction
which is the high production, digital
terrain development software. Then there
was our latest product called ERDAS
APOLLO on the Cloud."
Campbell claims that ERDAS APOLLO is
the result of a merger between three
different technical paths. In 2007 ERDAS
acquired the Belgian company, IONIC and
the Australian company, ER Mapper
which provided ERDAS with a new server
technology called image web server
(IWS). By combining the capabilities and
expertise from the three companies,
ERDAS was able to broaden its offerings
and create ERDAS APOLLO.
"Our ERDAS APO LLO product is
traditionally sold to a customer who
installs it themselves and configures it
and customises it for their own
purposes," says Campbell. "And that
requires a significant amount of
hardware, additional software like
databases and web servers and
application servers, as well as the
expertise to manage all of it. ERDAS
APOLLO on the Cloud has simplified that
entire process, providing a customer with
a solution that includes all of the
hardware and software they need, as well
as the expertise to set the system up and
get it running in a hosted off-site
environment. We offer ERDAS APOLLO
on the Cloud on a monthly subscription
basis so our customers can use it for as
little or as long as they want. One of the
things that we heard in the marketplace
was that people appreciated the value
that Apollo would deliver to their
organisation but they did not have the
servers that they needed or the expertise
to work with software, and so they
weren't able to take advantage of what
Apollo offers. We took that as an
opportunity to use the cloud and the
cloud computing business model to
provide Apollo to that particular set of
customers."
Launched in July 2010, ERDAS APOLLO on the Cloud is a new cloud-based
geospatial data management and
delivery solution. As a turnkey solution
the product is a pay-as-you-go
subscription enabling organisations to
maintain their geospatial serving
operation in a secure and scalable
environment and eliminating the need
for IT expertise and in-house hardware,
making it extremely cost effective. The
package includes a software licence,
computing infrastructure, storage and
bandwidth. As a unique addition to
ERDAS APOLLO suite of products,
Campbell claims the company has
already received a tremendous amount of
positive feedback from customers around
the world.
"The website continues to receive
literally hundreds if not thousands of
views per day of people who are
interested in understanding more about
ERDAS APOLLO on the Cloud," he says.
"We are very happy with the response for
a product that was released so recently.
The challenge for us is getting the word
out and helping people understand what
it is we are actually offering. Cloud
computing is often not well understood.
So in addition to trying to explain the
value of our product offering, that
naturally leads into explaining what cloud
computing is. Another challenge is that
the hosting environment is not in the
customer's own particular organisation.
In some cases organisations are reluctant
to send their data somewhere else and
still be confident of the security and
management of that data. But these are
challenges that we will be able to
overcome. Our Apollo product is built on
industry standards. It is completely open
and interoperable, and has in many cases
driven industry standards for how web
mapping or network connected mapping
is performed. This is one of our
strengths."
According to Campbell the marketing
strategy for APOLLO on the Cloud is
primarily through press releases and
established sales and distribution
channels, as well as a series of webinars.
"We  are targeting two primary markets
with this product," says Campbell. "One
is the small organisation without the
hardware or expertise. Many of them are
existing customers, so we can reach
them through our current channels. The
other market that has shown tremendous
interest in this product is organisations
that are doing project based work. For
instance they may have a 90 day or six
month project to create data analysis,
and need this capability for a short period
of time. Apollo on the cloud provides a
way for them to set up their project and
use the software for the amount of time
that they need it, and only pay for what
they use. This target market is primarily
engineering companies or geospatial
systems services providers who do work
on behalf of the government or other
organisations."
Another product in ERDAS' portfolio is
their LPS eATE suite which provides
photogrammetric production tools for
triangulation, generating terrain models,
producing orthomosaics and extracting
3D features. According to Campbell this
photogrammetric package processes raw
remotely sensed data and uses it to
create geographically correct images.
Over the next few years the company
plans to enhance their core product lines
and work on new viewing technologies,
adding 3D, 4D and 5D capabilities. "We
continue to look at emerging
technologies and how that may be
applied in the geospatial context," says
Campbell. "We are also working on our
research and development on supporting
radar from different instruments as well
as laser scanning both from aerial and
ground-based sources. At ERDAS we are
committed to delivering two software
releases every year. We have a minor
release every spring which primarily
contains minor enhancements and
improvements in the software. And we
have a major release every fall which
includes new features and new
capabilities. So we continue to work in
parallel on delivering our two releases as
well as doing advanced research and
development work.
"Known as the 'Earth to Business
Company', ERDAS employs around 300
people worldwide and has offices in the
US, Belgium, India, Singapore and
Australia. Campbell claims the majority of
the company's revenue comes from
North America, followed by the Asia
Pacific Region and then Europe, Middle
East and Africa. ERDAS is owned by Leica
Geosystems which is located in
Heerbrugg, Switzerland, which in turn is
part of Hexagon AB, a global technology
group headquartered in Stockholm,
Sweden. "Our parent company," says
Campbell "in both cases, Leica and
Hexagon, are primarily focused on
measurement technology, aerial digital
imaging, terrestrial laser scanning, GPS,
survey, metrology and more."
ERDAS provides defence and geospatial
intelligence solutions for military,
intelligence and homeland security
operations. The company also actively
provides industry solutions in the areas of
academic research and education,
disaster and emergency management,
earth observations, oil and gas and
extractive industries, photogrammetric
production and mapping, and water
resource management.
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