OGC Press Releases

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, Massachusetts, USA, March 24, 1997 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems AG (SNI) has become a Principal Member of the consortium. As a Principal Member, SNI has a seat on OGC's Management Committee, which oversees the OGC Technical Committee and plans cooperative industry development programs.

David Schell, OGC's president, said, "This is an major event for OGC. SNI is an important participant in the global GIS industry, and it is significant for Europe and the industry that this broad-based information technology company supports the OpenGIS Specification. We seek to make geographic data and geoprocessing an integral part of enterprise information systems around the world, and Siemens Nixdorf will help us make that vision a reality."

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, Massachusetts, USA January 28, 1997 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that it has received excellent responses to its recent Requests for Information (RFIs) which are part of the OpenGIS Interoperability Specification effort. The RFIs cover geographic information catalog services and imagery.

Seven organizations submitted information in response to the "OpenGIS Catalog Services RFI." These submissions suggest requirements to include in an RFP for standard mechanisms for discovery of geographic information in a networked environment of heterogeneous spatial databases. Among the submitters were the ISO (International Standards Organization) Cataloguing Project Team, the US Federal Geographic Data Committee, the US Department of Defense's National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (Frascati, Italy).

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, Massachusetts, USA January 2, 1997 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that in November and December, 1996, the following organizations became members of the consortium:

Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA) joined as a Principal Member of the consortium. Principal Members have a seat on OGC's Management Committee, which oversees the OGC Technical Committee and plans cooperative industry development programs. Autodesk, Inc., (Sausalito, CA) already a member, increased their level of participation to Principal Member.

Booz Allen & Hamilton, Inc. (Vienna, VA), Regional Science Institute (Sapporo, Japan) and LAS (Logiciels et Applications Scientifiques, Inc., Montreal, Quebec, Canada) joined at the Technical Committee level of membership.

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, Massachusetts, USA January 2, 1997 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA) has become a Principal Member of the consortium. As a Principal Member, Microsoft has a seat on OGC's Management Committee, which oversees the OGC Technical Committee and plans cooperative industry development programs.

Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA) joined as a Principal Member of the consortium. Principal Members have a seat on OGC's Management Committee, which oversees the OGC Technical Committee and plans cooperative industry development programs. Autodesk, Inc., (Sausalito, CA) already a member, increased their level of participation to Principal Member.

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, MA, August 30, 1996. The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) today announced a Request for Proposals (RFP) for engineering specifications that implement the simple geometry components of the OpenGIS Specification ("OGIS") for major distributed computing platforms, such as OLE/COM, CORBA, the Internet, and ODBC. This major OGC milestone reflects two facts: 1) Basic work has been completed on the OpenGIS Abstract Specification, sufficient to specify common methods for accessing geodata in heterogeneous network computing environments; and 2) An RFP process has been implemented as a way to cause OpenGIS Specification compliant products to be brought to market in as short a time as possible.

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) recently announced a new Request for Proposals (RFP) policy by which geoprocessing software vendors will deliver specifications for interoperable geoprocessing software on targeted distributed computing platforms (DCPs) such as OLE/COM, CORBA, and Java. Each RFP will request a DCP-specific engineering specification and accompanying demonstration software for a specific part of OGC's OpenGIS® Specification (OGIS). Once approved, a proposal becomes the industry standard for software compliant with the specified part of the specification on a particular DCP. RFPs will be announced in various publications and on OGC's Web site.

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

Salt Lake City, UT, URISA '96 - July 29, 1996 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (Wayland, MA) today announced that Bentley Systems, Inc. (Exton, PA) has joined the Consortium as a principal member. The Open GIS Consortium (OGC) is a non-profit membership organization dedicated to the development of interoperability standards for the geoprocessing community. As one of three principal members providing geoprocessing software, Bentley will take a lead role in this worldwide effort for transparent sharing of geoprocessing resources.

Bentley's participation will focus on GeoEngineering, the expanding market of unified engineering and planning. The company will help OGC establish geoprocessing standards and support those standards in MicroStation GeoGraphics(TM), its integrated computer-aided design (CAD) and GIS product. The high volume of users that have purchased MicroStation GeoGraphics already in its first five months as well as the growing number of third-party developers will enjoy considerable benefits from this interoperability.

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, Massachusetts, USA July 12, 1996 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces that Larry Ayers, Executive Vice President, Intergraph Corporation, has joined OGC's Board of Directors. Mr. Ayers was nominated by the board and elected by the OGC Management Committee, which oversees implementation of the OGC technical and business initiatives in accordance with strategic directions set by the Board.

"Larry Ayers' election to the OGC Board is an affirmation of his personal qualities and vision, as well as a recognition of his career achievement as a leader of the international geographic information community," said David Schell, OGC's president. "Our membership has been impressed, in particular, by the work he has done in recent years to create open system technology options for geoprocessing. We look forward to his involvement in OGC activities, and to his making a substantial contribution to our strategic and business planning activities."

Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778-5037
voice: (508) 655-5858
fax: (508) 655 2237
email: lmckee@opengeospatial.org

Wayland, Massachusetts, USA May 9, 1996 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces that the "OpenGIS(TM) Guide: An Introduction to Interoperable Geoprocessing, Part 1 of the Open Geodata Interoperability Specification (OGIS)" was recently completed and is now available to the public.

This 134 page book, compiled from the submitted proposals and minutes of OGC Technical Committee meetings over the last eighteen months, and edited by Kurt Buehler and Lance McKee, provides a detailed description of the rationale and technical content of OGIS. Engineering specifications for implementing OGIS-based software on various distributed computing platforms such as OLE/COM, CORBA, Java, etc. will be coming out of the OGIS Project over the next several years.