Boundless Launches GIS Products Based on

Open-Source, Data-Rich Future

Boundless is looking to create a license-free model for mapping tools.

BY BEN MILLER (HTTP://WWW.GOVTECH.COM/AUTHORS/BEN-MILLER.HTML) / NOVEMBER 15, 2016

Boundless is betting that open source, non-proprietary and license-free is the future of
the geographic information systems (GIS) market.

Its a bet wagered in the form of dual product launches this week. Boundless, which
already offers a GIS platform and sells to government, is filling out its offerings to move
from a platform to an ecosystem. The first, Boundless Desktop, is a desktop GIS tool
filled out with analytics, plugins and various other tools. The other, Boundless Connect, is
essentially a hub capable of connecting Desktop, other Boundless services and even
third-party GIS programs.

All without a user license.

Were selling support, were not selling licenses, said Andy Dearing, Boundless chief
executive officer.

That means the company is putting its stake in helping its clients make the platform work
for their own specific uses its biggest customers thus far have been at federal agencies
such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but its beginning to work
more with state and local customers. The software comes free, but the how-tos, the
maintenance, the support line, anything extra, needs to be paid for.

Theres a big, cloudy reason for that. The leadership team at Boundless is looking to the
future, as government gathers more and more data from body cameras, from drones,
even from ubiquitous sensor nodes. Wearables, connected vehicles, mobile devices. The
Internet of Things.

Anthony Calamito, Boundless chief evangelist, sees so much possible data coming
governments way in the future that many GIS managers and users today are going to
need to scale up their operations massively.

We truly believe that our technology, the open source stack, is better suited to meet that
need, he said.

In a proprietary, license-based model, users might need to pay more to scale up their
operations. For some, the extra costs might mean going through a procurement cycle,

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 which takes time and resources.

For its part, ArcGIS maker Esri the dominant player in the GIS market, and one of the
older government technology companies around today has a plan for when its
customers need to scale up. Christian Carlson, Esris director of state, local and provincial
government, said the company can work in licensing models that account for surges in
use, as well as a shift model that allows users with similar roles to share time on a
license. He declined to say whether scaling up would mean extra costs for those
customers, but said it hasnt been a problem for the companys users.

Its completely cost-effective for them, Carlson said. I have yet to have a customer on
our side complain that the model was a barrier for them to deploy the technology.

Esri also prices its support and extra services, including the support of emergency
management experts in case theres need for them, into its licensing.

Our licensing, you really have to consider our licensing models to include those
comprehensive services we provide, he said.

But then, according to Calamito, using Boundless doesnt necessarily mean moving past
Esri or anybody else.

Its not an or, its an and, Calamito said. Its not a binary [choice].

Thats been the case at the Port of Seattle, which operates Seattle-Tacoma International
Airport and various maritime facilities. Eric Drenckpohl, enterprise GIS manager for the
port, said his organization has a citys worth of operations up to and including police
and fire and as such, needs a broad-focused GIS platform and not just a set of
narrowly-focused tools.

So it built its own program, Port Explorer, using Esri tools. Then, for version two, the port
set up a hybrid system that uses Boundless to connect with Esri and other programs.
Boundless allows Drenckpohl to pull aerial photos from an Esri database while drawing
boundaries based on data in a PostGIS system.

Having a hybrid GIS environment with proprietary and non-proprietary really

strengthens my role as a GIS manager because I have options, more tools in my toolbelt,
Drenckpohl said.

The ability to scale up also helps, he said. For Drenckpohl, its an issue of operational
efficiency.

I cant manage 1,800 discrete users and try to figure out what permissions they have, he

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 said.

Instead, hed rather set up a system with enough disparate data and tools to let users do
things he cant predict anything from locating a specific manhole cover in a vast plot of
land to plotting out security incidents through the airport.

And thats what Boundless is going for. The new product launches focus a lot on the word
ecosystem. They are far from being the only GIS provider. But they want to be the
provider of an open-source ecosystem.

Weve seen some commercial providers do this," Calamito said, "but we havent seen it
from an open-source perspective.

Ben Miller (http://www.govtech.com/authors/Ben-Miller.html) Staff Writer

Ben Miller is the business beat staff writer forGovernment Technology. His reporting experience includes
breaking news, business, community features and technical subjects. He holds a Bachelors degree in journalism
from the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, and lives in Sacramento, Calif.

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