Changes in Technology and Social Trends Are Impacting Mapping Organizations around the World

Redlands, California— August 29, 2011—New technology is changing the face of mapping organizations around the world. Are national mapping agencies and traditional mapmakers able to keep up? The question is posed at the Spatial Roundtable by Mark Cygan, Esri's map, chart, data production, and spatial data infrastructure (SDI) industry manager. Cygan and other industry leaders discuss which strategies and resources are becoming more important to mapping organizations.

"Society is changing, and so are its expectations of what maps are and how they should be used," says Cygan. "The industry has experienced a 50 percent drop in the production of paper maps, charts, and atlases in the last decade. Instances of maps generated online, however, have increased."

Cygan believes that mapping organizations can ride the new wave of change by providing maps and charts in the form of electronic media and derivative map and data products for the web and mobile devices. However, Cygan says, "If they don't adapt, they run the risk of being washed away."

Visit spatialroundtable.com and join the discussion.

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

Contact:

Karen Richardson
Esri
Tel.: 909-793-2853, extension 1-3491
E-mail: Email Contact