AirZip™, Inc., a company in image delivery solutions, and ESRI have announced a business technology alliance. AirZip will integrate its middleware product, AirZip Image Accelerator, into ESRI’s Geography Network for the rapid delivery of geographic information and mapping services. ESRI’s Geography Network enables providers to make maps, GIS data, and software components available to customers over the Internet as Web services.
AirZip’s Image Accelerator technology will increase the delivery speed with which geographic content can be delivered through the Geography Network, significantly benefiting users of low-bandwidth networks. In addition, through this agreement, users of ESRI’s ArcIMS software will be able to acquire AirZip’s Image Accelerator software as an add-on to ArcIMS. With AirZip Image Accelerator installed, ArcIMS users will experience image delivery performance improvements by as much as 400 percent.
With recent accelerated growth in Web-based mapping services for mobile users, ESRI is focusing on improving performance in dial-up or wireless network environments. As part of this strategy, ESRI is integrating its Web-based GIS technology with AirZip’s image acceleration solutions, which compress map images for faster delivery over the Internet to mobile clients, including future versions of ArcPad. ESRI’s ArcPad software is a mapping and GIS application for mobile systems.
