Excerpt from: Globally AWhere
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| August 28, 2008 | | With the launch of it's new web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool, AWhere completes the final link in the chain between GIS and Google Maps. | Mapping is a complex science. Over history it has had enormous implications for world history, politics, economics and more. In the digital age, maps have become even more impactful, as the technology for mapping moved from a handful of cartographers to a professional class of specialists in GIS.
 While many companies had been deploying web-based maps before the turn of the century, in 2005, digital mapping changed forever when Google launched Google Maps. With the release of their application programming interface (API), which allows other hundreds of millions of people to interact with the maps, Google provided the world with the ability to start using maps for all sorts of new uses.
But there was still a huge gap from the overly complex mapping tools that were and still are the exclusive province of the cartographers and the easy but simplistic maps anyone could create with Google Maps. A gap so big that it takes two big steps to cross. Enter AWhere.
The first step is the simplification of desktop software that can be run by smart business people with a knowledge of Excel. After starting as a geo-analytics consultancy in 1999, AWhere was born as a software company in 2007, and is being used in companies around the country and in many spots on the globe to create actionable business intelligence.
But desktop software is only part of the solution, and the second big step is being taken today. This week, AWhere launches AWhere InSite, a compreshensive web-based application that provides the ease and accessibility of web tools with the transformative power of sophisticated mapping.
We'll be talking about case studies and more specific applications in the coming weeks and months, but take notice: the business intelligence landscape has changed.
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