MalaysiaGIS.com

Source: The Star

"MapInfo has the expertise in the application of location intelligence to business analytics," said Mark Cattini, its president and chief executive officer.

Cattini, who spoke to In.Tech in Petaling Jaya this week, said that traditional business analytics companies’ strength lie in crunching raw data and making sense of it.

"You could have a business intelligence tool, from any vendor, that gathers and processes massive data sets and have algorithms running up and down and figuring out what the linkage and correlation patterns are.

"But what these companies don’t have is the ability to correlate them based on location," he claimed.

MapInfo’s group vice-president of sales and marketing Gavin Lennox added that location is often a variable rather than an analytical discipline in itself in the field of competitive analysis.

"It’s merely an address in a table, which can be grouped together for intelligence purposes," he said.

Lennox said that MapInfo is able to provide the technology and the understanding of the spatial interactions between those addresses.

Cattini revealed that one area of growth that MapInfo plans to expand on is the application of location technology to the retail segment. He said that MapInfo’s software gives companies the ability to understand geographic relationships between points on the Earth's surface.

"Our technology allows us to bring the reality of location into solving a problem. For example, if there are two stores near a group of consumers, these stores would be interested in knowing how long it would take for consumers to get to the store or which store they would choose to go to and why.

"With the collaboration of traditional business analytics and MapInfo’s products, the stores would be able to understand the physical network of roads leading to the stores, how long it would take a consumer to get to the store or a competing store and what the impact of that distance is," he explained.

He added that MapInfo has a number of global strategic agreements with renowned business intelligence vendors such as, Cognos Inc and Business Objects Inc.

"In fact we have our technology embedded in Cognos," he said.

Exclusive distributorship
Meanwhile, as part of its ongoing expansion into Asia, MapInfo signed an exclusive international distributor agreement with Map Information Solutions Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian provider of geographic information systems (GIS) solutions.

Under this agreement, Map Information Solutions will offer customised and packaged MapInfo solutions in Malaysia. These solutions are built with advanced GIS technologies and a broad portfolio of software and data products designed to meet the growing demand for spatial applications throughout Malaysia.

"These agreements are indicative of MapInfo’s commitment to Malaysia. We are pleased to have forged a relationship with a company that is recognised globally for its superior spatial technology and expertise," said Michael Koo, director of Map Information Solutions.

Map Information Solutions’ local client base spans various sectors including the public sector, telecommunications, utilities, consumer and retail, emergency services, fleet management and education. For more on Map Information Solutions, call (03) 9057-9918.