With the sweeping pace of digitalization, Cloud integration, and technological convergence and integration across all levels, there has been a reorientation in industry outlook, consumer demand, and market expectation. The geospatial sector is adapting to changes to become more agile and ahead of the curve.
Deepti Dutt, Head – Strategic Initiatives, Public Sector, Amazon Internet Services, who moderated the insightful session, spoke about the need to demystify the services vs solutions divide to move ahead in the value chain.
Seamless Transition
“Geospatial is unlike any other industry. It is all-pervasive, but yet not all encompassing as for most sectors it is basically a cog in the wheel”, says Raj Alla, Chairman & Managing Director, IIC Technologies.
These days, new companies are moving from services to products, however, most are still service companies due to various reasons. Alla illustrated the case of MapMyIndia as a significant example of a service company transforming itself into a solution provider.
“There is going to be an element of customization always because there can’t be one solution for everything. A company can look at value chain from data acquisition to processing and analytics, and offering end-to-end solutions”, he adds.
Services Bias?
“Most companies are into services business because it’s easy to get into, scalable, and most problem areas are pre-defined by the client. In services, opportunities are huge, including scalable mapping. So the question arises, is there a need to move from service to products”, asks Sreeraman GV, CEO, NEOGeoinfo Technologies.
One of the reasons, in his view, for the predisposition towards services is the certainty of projects as well as fairly well-identified pain points. While the transition may be challenging depending on the requirements, what’s needed perhaps is a synergy between the two, lending an innovative impetus to both.
“For automating data-creation for mapping, the information part is crucial, which can never be fully automated, and is domain specific. So services will co-exist with solutions, and most can be tuned”.
He emphasized data analytics as a solution, productization of existing services, and the movement towards systems integration as upcoming opportunity areas.
Geospatial Evolution
“Geospatial has moved from desktop environment of scientific community to where it is result-driven. Rapid deployment, ease-of-use, and targeted applications require geospatial enablement”, says Atanu Sinha, CEO, Altz Technologies.
“We are seeing migration of technologies from the days of high-end computers to the Cloud age. Proliferation of mobile phones has also led to widespread access of geospatial”.
Catalyzing collaboration through value creation, creating customized services, and increasing the size of geospatial, are areas to look at. From the government’s standpoint, there needs to be a change in the procurement mechanism.
