New York, NY, USA, — November 02, 2010 — AfriSpatial, an expert GIS systems and services provider, and OpenGeo, producer of the OpenGeo Suite, today announced a reseller agreement that will bring the first Enterprise FOSS stack offering to the southern African market. AfriSpatial will assume first line support for the OpenGeo Suite for end users in countries throughout southern Africa, while gaining privileged access to OpenGeo for second line support.

Upon announcing the agreement, Gavin Fleming, CEO of AfriSpatial noted: "Our new relationship with OpenGeo is particularly timely. South African Government FOSS policy is gaining momentum in implementation, and AfriSpatial will be able to assist end users adopting open source geospatial solutions by immediately bringing in-depth experience with the open source components promoted by OpenGeo."

Chris Holmes, OpenGeo President, also remarked: "AfriSpatial has deep experience with the components of the OpenGeo stack dating back to 2004. We are excited to be working with their team, and are looking forward to the expansion in open source geospatial software use in southern Africa this relationship will make possible."

OpenGeo is well known worldwide for its contributions and leadership in the development and evolution of powerful open source geospatial technologies. The OpenGeo Suite offers a fully integrated open source geospatial platform for serving maps and data through web applications, mobile devices, and desktop clients. The OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition is comprised of tested, integrated and supported geospatial components GeoServer, OpenLayers, GeoWebCache, PostGIS and GeoExt.

About OpenGeo

OpenGeo is a social enterprise working to build the best web-based geospatial technology. The company brings the best practices of open source software to geospatial organizations around the world by providing enterprises with supported, tested, and integrated open source solutions to build the Geospatial Web. OpenGeo also supports open source communities by employing key developers of PostGIS, GeoServer, and OpenLayers. The company has a seven-year history of providing successful consulting services and products to clients like the World Bank, Google, MassGIS, Portland, TriMet, Landgate, and the Open Geospatial Consortium. OpenGeo is the geospatial division of OpenPlans, a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit that informs and engages communities through journalism and open source software.

About AfriSpatial

AfriSpatial is a pioneering SME in the southern African GIS community, with access to a large network of skilled local resources. It offers a range of FOSS GIS services and solutions, including support and training. AfriSpatial is also actively involved in raising awareness about and advocating FOSS GIS, especially in education and government. Gavin Fleming from AfriSpatial also leads the local OSGeo Chapter and brought FOSS4G 2008 to South Africa. With the addition of the OpenGeo Suite to its offerings, AfriSpatial can now fill a major gap in the market—for those organizations needing the lower risk and powerful backing of an Enterprise-class product.

An example of a current, local, high profile project using OpenGeo components where AfriSpatial is the lead geospatial contractor is Tracks4Africa, which uses PostGIS and OpenLayers.



Contact:

Eddie Pickle,
OpenGeo,
+1 877 OPENGEO / (212-796-4220 x 6)

Gavin Fleming,
AfriSpatial,
+27 84-596-5680