Basic solutions, good business
There is always something that the tools of large companies do not do very well, on this they take advantage of small to develop solutions that fill the need of customers, generally they were.
If it is a good business or not, the model is interesting, they usually go to the annual conferences to promote their products or services; I remember seeing at one of the ESRI conferences, in San Diego, a Sketchup! booth, that software that Google later acquired. We have also seen that several of those small companies soon end up being acquired by the big emporiums or selling you the small solution that in the next version arrives as a new extension.
Generally big companies let them work close by, so as not to harm their business and knowing that they complement them, although bad practice is usually acquired once you run the risk of affecting your business or to avoid the risk that goes with the competition.
There are thousands of businesses like that, which by the way move a lot of money under this model. In this case I want to show one of those examples that, since the wireless connection is terrible in this old hotel and after the rainy season has started, it seems that the night will be very long.
This company is located in New Jersey, is dedicated to a very specific business, solutions for those who make maps and who do not want to break the coconut with the handling of text.
As we know, the labeling is done "to the beast" by most CAD / GIS programs and although it does not affect us much for work in the office, when we take a map that will go to press, the cartographer of the company suggests that many bad texts well-off move out of position. It is a terrible headache because there are such extreme cases that the only way is to convert the text into graphics.
And just at that moment arises MapText, with solutions for placing text without human intervention. They are interesting basic functions such as:
- Automated Leadering
- Block self-enumeration
- Curved text in a shape
- Curved text in linestrings
- Data Tables
- Level Contour Labeling
Now they also work with web-oriented tools, although their flagship product called Label EZ works with leading software vendors:
- ArcGIS 8x and 9x
- ArcInfo
- ArcView
- AutoCAD Map
- Geomedia
- Mapinfo
- Microstation
- MGE
A very simple product, oriented to a basic need of the companies that produce maps for printing, that simple seems but conceptualize it is not it.
Other examples:
Corporate Montage, he made products for Microstation users based on his great weakness of these: printing. Finally Bentley bought their solution from them and now offers it as very robust CADScript and MAPScript by the way to create output layouts of very high quality and functionality indispensable in mapping of the past (printed as it says 2014 Cadastre)
Now they are entertained with CADform, a solution to normalize standards between AutoCAD and Microstation in conjunction with Altiva Software.
AxiomintThese are dedicated to many solutions that Microstation users require and although their applications could be integrated by Bentley, it has been respected to the degree of being considered almost a partner company (partner) since they also enter training and produce a newsletter called Microstation Today. Perhaps I will speak of them one day because their products are quite a lot and highly appreciated by Bentley users, especially now that they are taking advantage of the xml format.
HNG Systems
They do almost anything, you just have to see their area of expertise to determine what I call Geofumados; This is the case of a company that is treading this trend and, as their manager told me, they were about to sell themselves to a very large company but managed to overcome the temptation ... for the time being.
They make small solutions for large companies, either in Outsourcing or under a conventional subcontracting; in the case of geospatial solutions they include ESRI, Bentley and Manifold. At this point they already have their own products, such as Dossier Manager Of which I spoke to you last year and now work in MapBox, a smoker to cut the veins that is not intended to be a new GIS program but a geographical data manager for municipal use that works with Manifold 8x.
