[Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

[Simon Greener (SpatialDB Advisor)]

Francis,

> I think this was Pat's problem.
>
> He needs to have an argument to feed to the board level directors and  
> they
> will ask for this information. They are the ones taking a risk judgement.

<Comment>
I would say this is the first time I have heard of board level directors
asking for the financial credentials of a GIS company before purchasing a  
product!
Do they also interfere at the same level with lower level management  
decisions
for similarly priced packages? Manifold GIS is not MRO's Maximo. By that I  
mean
that it will not have key corporate information locked up inside  
proprietary
data structures. Manifold GIS should be a client to corporate data stores  
and
information systems. Once this perspective is taken commodity software  
becomes
risk-free. If Manifold.Net went bankrupt (as if) because the data, rules  
and
processes are all in corporate business systems one should be able to cut  
out
the offending package and replace it with another eg MapInfo (as it reads  
Oracle
Spatial for example). IF an "ESRI" test is being applied to the purchasing  
decision
then there is a HUGE difference between Manifold GIS and Arc*. In the  
latter's case
ESRI is saying: if it is spatial then you need a spatial system to manage  
all aspects
of the data. That is, ESRI demands you hand over data management (ArcSDE +
proprietary Geodatabase structures see the ESRI Starter Data Models for an  
example
of ESRI trying to control back end vertically aligned corporate databases),
middle-tier processes (ArcGIS Server), and all client editing (ArcMap etc)  
to them.
That is a VERY different business decision and would require careful risk
analysis. Manifold GIS is clearly not in the same space and so does not  
require
such a risk assessment.
</Comment>

regards
S
-- 
--------------------------------------------------
Simon Greener
SpatialDB Advice, Solutions Architect,
Oracle Spatial, MYSQL, PostGIS and Manifold enthusiast
Allens Rivulet, Tasmania, Australia.
Voice: +61 3 62396397
Longitude: 147.2048
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