MapServing.com Provides Dedicated Internet Map Server Hosting

10 February 2004 - Carson City USA: MapServing.com today launched a new web hosting service dedicated to hosting GIS-enabled websites. The site uses Manifold^® Internet Map Server technology to provide high performance, high quality sites at a low cost. Users may create their own web sites or can retain MapServing.com experts to create a custom site. Users who create solutions with Manifold System can publish them to the web using www.mapserving.com without any need to operate their own web server.

"We're very excited about this opportunity. We've had numerous customers contact us even before the site launched with requests for GIS-enabled websites using Manifold technology. It's clear that more people than ever want to use GIS technology to create websites that better serve their organizations. Using Manifold allows MapServing.com to provide superior quality and performance at a fraction of the cost of traditional GIS-enabled web sites," said David Brubacher, co-founder of MapServing.com.

"Our hosting environment and enhanced IMS tools allow for very sophisticated functionality while retaining excellent ease-of-use. Everyone from hobbyists to large corporations will be able to painlessly publish and maintain their maps. If you can use email, you can publish Manifold^® maps on MapServing.com"

"Manifold System makes it easier than ever before to create map-enabled web sites, but some users would prefer not to operate their own web server. MapServing.com operates web servers that have Manifold IMS already installed on them so that Manifold users can easily publish their projects to the web." said Dimitri Rotow, Product Manager for Manifold System.

He continued, "The emergence of vendors like MapServing.com expands the benefits of low cost and high quality GIS to an even wider audience. Getting a GIS-enabled web site up used to be a costly and hair-tearing experience with old-fashioned products like ESRI's ArcSDE. With Manifold^® it's always been easy and now with MapServing.com it's effortless."

MapServing.com provides a rich menu of choices, with basic map hosting services ranging from $15 to $75 per month. Advanced services include full web site hosting, integration with existing web sites and local intranet deployment. Customers can choose options including:

• Public or Private Access - Maps can be made available to the general public or restricted to authorized users.
• User Accounts and Security Groups - Authorized users are allowed to view and/or administer different part of the site.
• Customization – Including additional Map Server tools, custom page, backgrounds, text and images.
• Technical Support – Packages can include up to twelve help incidents per year. Peer support through discussion forums is available both within the MapServing.com site itself and at the Manifold users’ group site, www.GeoReference.org.
• External Databases - Links from SQL Server^® or Access^® databases.
• Numerous map and data management tools.

MapServing.com can help people create their maps, find source data, provide performance tips or even build entire web mapping solutions. The mission of MapServing.com is to be the first choice for complete, inexpensive and easy to implement solutions that dispense with the cost and complexity of running an Internet Map Server.

What is GIS? - A Geographic Information System (GIS) software package is an application that combines mapping, database and analytic capabilities. Although many people use GIS for purely cartographic tasks such as creating new maps, the real power of GIS lies in the connection between a visual map and database information attached to what is seen in the map. Complex database information is often best understood not by searching through endless numbers in rows and columns in a text database table but rather when displayed as symbols in a map or different colors of regions in a map.

What is an Internet Map Server? A GIS-enabled web site? - An Internet Map Server (IMS) is a software package that can display information from a GIS, either visually or in tables, as part of a web site. Web applications like MapQuest are simple examples of consumer IMS functions. A GIS-enabled web site is simply a web site that uses an IMS to provide the power of GIS to its visitors.

How does Manifold IMS differ from MapQuest^®? - MapQuest is a consumer IMS application that works with one set of road maps to find addresses and display routes. Manifold IMS can work with any maps the web page designer chooses and can provide a limitless range of capabilities made possible through spatial SQL (Structured Query Language, the query language used by most databases). For example, a consortium of fishing companies might show maps of fishing grounds of common interest with reports of the latest catches or a state park may show a trail map of a park with trails color-coded by difficulty.

How does Manifold IMS differ from other IMS Products? - Manifold IMS is unique in that it is a built-in part of the Manifold System GIS. Other IMS packages all require a separate application to actually put the map on the Internet. Use of a separate GIS / IMS combination increases costs, requires learning a different command structure for the GIS and the IMS and makes it difficult to publish a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) map because the separate GIS and IMS products have different display methodologies. By combining both GIS and IMS into one package, Manifold makes it easy for authors of new web maps to simply create a project the way they want it to look and then (through a File - Export - Web Page command) publish it in web-ready form without any programming. In contrast, other IMS products require a formidable amount of programming and programming skills to publish an IMS-enabled web page.

Where does MapServing.com fit in? - An IMS-enabled web page is just like other web pages in that anyone with a computer that has a full-time Internet connection and a web server can publish their own content. Most people prefer to have someone else host their web pages though, because of the hassle of operating a web server and keeping a machine running and connected to the web full time. Although anyone with Manifold system and a Windows web server could host an IMS-enabled web page, many more people would prefer to have a web-hosting service that can accept their Manifold IMS projects for publication or will create a Manifold IMS project for them. That's what MapServing.com does.

Are there other services of this nature for other IMS products? - Yes. There are two other types of IMS hosting services: 1) services offering hosting for legacy IMS products such as ESRI's ArcIMS and 2) services offering hosting for proprietary non-GIS products such as Blue Marble's hosting service.

How do these alternatives compare to the Mapserving.com / Manifold offering? - Services based on legacy GIS products are vastly more expensive because they are based on inefficient, expensive legacy products that are very difficult to configure and update. Services using proprietary products, such as the Blue Marble service, are both expensive and limiting in that they do not allow users to configure their own projects with a general purpose GIS package but instead require all configuration to occur within a proprietary interface that is used nowhere else in the world but that one vendor's web site. That's a formula for higher cost and locking in customers who cannot move their projects elsewhere to get a better deal. Mapserving.com provides a more powerful solution at dramatic cost savings that will usually be from ten times to as much as one hundred times lower cost than legacy technology, a decisive advantage in the competitive world of web hosting

How can the MapServing.com service cost so much less? What's the catch? - There's no catch: MapServing.com achieves cost efficiencies by using modern, mass-market GIS software. That's much more efficient than using obsolete IMS software or funding custom IMS development for a one-of-a-kind proprietary environment. It's the same cost efficiency gained, for example, by using Microsoft Word for word processing instead of trying to write your own word processor. The MapServing.com / Manifold combination takes advantage of the considerable progress achieved in software and hardware technology in the last five years. Legacy approaches, like using ESRI's ArcIMS, are more difficult to configure, difficult to administer and difficult to program because they do not use modern software techniques and thus they are much more expensive.

How long does it take to create a website with Mapserving.com and Manifold? - A map-enabled website can be created and published in a matter of minutes without programming. A simple web site can be created in literally five minutes. That's much faster than the days and weeks it typically takes to get a GIS-enabled web site up and running using legacy technology without MapServing.com and Manifold.

Clients may visit MapServing.com at www.mapserving.com or contact David Brubacher at davidb@mapserving.com, 519-749-3511 [9 to 5, Eastern Time Zone].

Support for Journalists and Reviewers

Journalists wishing a review package of Manifold System with SP2 should contact Dimitri Rotow at dar@manifold.net or 800-556-5919 [Pacific Time Zone].