Trading up

As Geographic Information Systems (GIS) become an integral business tool, the need to upgrade to more sophisticated geospatial databases becomes more pressing. Infotech’s Greg Tilley explains why.

“GIS is finally making the transition from a niche application to an enterprise wide technology”
-Greg Tilley

What developments and changes have you seen over the years that have helped Infotech become a GIS industry leader today?
Greg Tilley. GIS is finally making the transition from a niche application to an enterprise wide technology. With this progression, there has been an increasing requirement for organizations to upgrade their geospatial databases and integrate them into their enterprise systems. Infotech has invested in understanding the business drivers in our core markets - utilities, telecom and government - so that we have become well positioned to help our clients to transform their legacy systems and meet the rapidly changing operational requirements.

As a global company, please explain what a global delivery model is and how it helps to insure quality and security while meeting schedule and budget constraints?
GT. At Infotech 'global delivery model' means we can deploy the most appropriate mix of resources to meet any range of skill, cost, schedule and security requirements while insuring the best overall value for our clients. Yes, we are part of a global organization, but first and foremost a US company. Infotech Enterprises America, Inc. is a California Corporation generating $70M in revenue, paying millions of dollars in income and payroll taxes and employing more than 400 people in North America. Our parent company, Infotech Enterprises Limited, is a global company of 8,000 people with offices in the UK, Europe, Japan, Australia and Asia. Operating as a US company, with a global parent, allows us to transcend the labels of 'offshoring', 'outsourcing', etc. We like to think of our model as 'right sourcing'. For projects requiring a large pool of highly skilled engineers operating in a super secure environment, we will tap into one of our development centers in India. If the engagement requires close proximity and a high level of interaction with the client, we will use onsite and/or North America based associates. In either case, the oversight of the engagement is maintained by our North American based account management and project management teams. In other words, we practice global delivery with local responsibility.

Infotech has had exceptional growth over the past five years. What has allowed Infotech to achieve and sustain this type of growth?
GT. Quality and reliability of our deliverables. I know that is a cliché, but we take great pride in achieving high rates of first time acceptance. On a recently completed project for a major telecommunications firm, we achieved 100 percent first time acceptance on delivery of an enterprise database with more than 8 million features. That kind of performance is made possible by our focus on process and efficiency. Consistent and reliable performance enhances our clients ROI and makes our sales team's job a lot easier.

What has Infotech done and what do you plan to do in order to get through this economic down turn?
GT. The down turn has impacted Infotech, like most businesses. Our growth has slowed and several major clients have delayed or suspended work that was scheduled for 2009. As a result, we have looked at cost containment wherever we could accomplish it without impacting customer service. While our overall workforce has not declined, we have made some strategic changes, shedding positions that are no longer required and adding positions to support new service areas that we expect to be growth engines as the economy recovers.

What geospatial innovations do you anticipate within the next five years? How will these innovations impact the solutions demanded by your clients?
GT. I think the innovations will be driven from two major forces that are just beginning to impact the markets we serve; 'smart grid' and 'cloud computing'. Both of these are loosely defined concepts at this point, but both represent potentially major shifts in the way our customers do business. In the geospatial arena, we've seen a progression of database sophistication through 'Conversion' (paper to CAD or simple GIS) and 'Migration' (CAD/GIS to spatially enabled database). The forces of smart grid and cloud computing will drive us to a new phase that we call 'Liberation'. This means geospatial databases will not only need to be intelligent and spatially enabled, but also platform independent and functionally compatible with all of an organization's operational databases, many of which will have been virtualized off the desktop.

Greg Tilley is President of Infotech Enterprises America, Inc., a California Corporation with over $70m in revenue and over 400 employees. He has 36 years experience in business management, GIS, remote sensing, and environmental planning. Mr. Tilley is a member of several GIS organizations and holds an MA in Geography from Michigan State University.