Lost Power? Con Ed Tool May Help...

MSPowerUtilities — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:53:00 GMT

As a follow-up to the blogs on Geospatial Systems on Steroids, there is a posting concerning the iFactor Virtual Earth solution at Consolidated Edison of New York on the NY Times Blog site. The title is: Lost Power? Con Ed Tool May Help (if Your Battery Is Charged) You can find it at: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/lost-power-con-ed-tool-may-help-if-your-battery-is-charged/

Of course if you don’t have power then you won’t be able to view the site but then again, you already know you have a problem J. The point is that a lot of people uch as regulators and businesses need to monitor power outages and the site helps them stay informed.

So why is Virtual Earth ( (http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/ ) so attractive for these real world applications?

Here’s a few points about what VE offers:

the most up to date aerial (roof top) imagery
the exclusive Bird’s Eye imagery (45 degree super high resolution, rotatable imagery)
24/7 Support
a 99.9 % guaranteed uptime service
the advantage of being in the Microsoft stack offering and part of the Enterprise offering
browser-based 2D and 3D offerings within the same set of application program interfaces.

These are just some of the reasons why VE is a very attractive offering to enterprises (weather channel is another example: http://www.weather.com/weather/map/interactive/) in need of an integrated mapping, imaging, search, and data visualization platform. - Jon

Geospatial Systems on Steroids

MSPowerUtilities — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:10:00 GMT

Utilities and other companies are no strangers to geographic information system technology as it is part of their resource management, asset management, environmental impact assessment and emergency planning and response operations. Utilities have been using geospatial systems for years and one of the first industries to adopt the technology.

As we look around at global utility industry trends we see many companies combining traditional utility GIS systems with new web based solutions that offer high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, dramatically faster response times, and easy integration with data sets. In some cases we are seeing very sophisticated “mashing up” of information from many different sources into new ways that leverage data visualization and location intelligence, all around composite applications.

Probably the best example is some of the work that IDV solutions (http://www.idvsolutions.com/) is doing using Virtual Earth and SharePoint in utilities and oil and gas. I strongly recommend your gaining a stronger understanding of this revolutionary technology by checking out our BP case study at: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/mar07/03-07crisisresponse.mspx. Make sure you view the video. - Jon

Microsoft Power and Utilities Blog : integrated mapping

Lost Power? Con Ed Tool May Help...

Geospatial Systems on Steroids