Mainsoft Corporation, the software porting company, and ESRI, the world leader in the geographic information system (GIS) software industry, announced that ESRI has licensed Mainsoft’s Visual MainWin as part of its cross-platform strategy. The announcement strengthens the three-year agreement between the two companies, and ensures that ESRI’s ArcGIS Web-based services will be available on various UNIX platforms.
ArcGIS, ESRI’s next-generation family of GIS products, is built on an extensive set of reusable COM components called ArcObjects. ESRI uses ArcObjects to build end user applications such as ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo, while software developers use ArcObjects directly to build custom GIS applications or to embed ArcGIS functionality into other applications. On any given day, more than 1 million people around the world use ESRI’s GIS products on multiple platforms.
In addition, ESRI will use the Mainsoft technology to port its ArcReader software to the UNIX environment. ArcReader, one of ESRI’s newest technologies, provides GIS users with the ability to share electronic maps locally, remotely over internal networks, or across the world via the Internet.
