OGC Press Releases

Wayland, MA, August 21, 2001. - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces that an OpenGIS® Recommendation has been made available to the public. The paper titled "Recommended Definition Data for Coordinate Reference Systems and Coordinate Transformations" is available for public review at http://www.opengeospatial.org/techno/specs.htm. This Recommendation Paper specifies a data model for metadata in support of the OpenGIS Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS) and Coordinate Transformations (CT) Implementation Specifications, and specifies standard definition data for the data model. Because the specified data model is more general than an OpenGIS Implementation Specification and more specific than the OpenGIS Abstract Specification, the work is being delivered in a Recommendation Paper. Representatives from three OGC member organizations, BAE SYSTEMS Mission Solutions, the Petrotechnical Open Software Corporation (POSC), and Shell International Exploration and Production B.V. developed the model using object-oriented analysis and design thinking. This specification harmonizes and improves the relevant XML work previously done by OGC. This OGC standard data model for coordinate reference systems and coordinate transformation definition data is intended for initial use with OGC's OpenGIS Geography Markup Language (GML) and Coordinate Transformation (CT) Implementation Specifications. That is, each of these two specifications is expected to use a subset and/or superset of the Definition Data described in the Recommendation Paper. Future revisions of this specification will convert the current XML Document Type Definitions (DTD) to XML Schema. Comments regarding this Recommendation Paper should be forwarded to the OGC Coordinate Transformation Working Group at ct [dot] wg [at] opengeospatial [dot] org . OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org . -- end --

Wayland, MA, USA, August 8, 2001 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) hosted 41 representatives from 35 companies and organizations at a July 31st meeting addressing its upcoming Open Location Services (OpenLS) Initiative. Attendees of the event helped further define the requirements and scope of first activity, a testbed to develop fundamental interfaces and services to allow a wide variety of location solutions to interoperate. Response to a Call For Participation, issued in mid-July, has been brisk, with over 150 organizations downloading the document. That interest, combined with questions and discussion from attendees at the one-day meeting led to an updated Testbed Execution Scenario. Clarifications and the updated execution scenario, along with presentations from the meetings are available for review at www.openls.org. Submissions in response to the Call for Participation are due on Monday, August 13. The OpenLS Testbed follows several other successful OGC testbeds where software engineers work in a hands-on collaborative environment to develop candidate interoperability interfaces. Services based on location information are becoming increasingly valuable in emergency response, public safety, and disaster management as well as in commercial applications for people on the move. The tremendous social value and commercial opportunity depends on consistent communication of location (and time), route, types of service, etc. across technology platforms, application domains, classes of products, and national regions. Each of the sponsors sees the benefit of a truly interoperable location services framework. Sponsors for the testbed include Hutchison 3G UK, Sun Microsystems, In-Q-Tel, ESRI with SignalSoft, and Oracle with Webraska. Opportunities for sponsors and participants are still available. Interested organizations are invited to contact for Mr. Louis Hecht at (301) 320-5760 or lhecht [at] opengeospatial [dot] org for additional information. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org and the OpenLS website at www.openls.org . -- end --

Wayland, MA, USA, July 26, 2001 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces that the Request for Quotation (RFQ) for the Open Web Services Initiative, Phase 1 (OWS-1) is available at http://ip.opengeospatial.org/ows. The OWS-1 Initiative aims to develop interfaces to enhance the growth of geospatial Web services. A Web service is a self-contained, self-describing, modular application that can be published, located, and dynamically invoked across the Web. Web services perform functions, ranging from simple requests to complicated business processes. Once a Web service is deployed, other applications, and other Web services, can discover and invoke the deployed service. OWS follows several previously successful initiatives that have helped accelerate the creation and deployment of interfaces to support open web services for spatial information and processing. The RFQ invites organizations to submit proposals to address the development of open interfaces and to validate them by developing reference implementations of software that use these interfaces. OWS-1 will be modular, and will be conducted in "thread sets" phased in over the coming year. This RFQ addresses the first Thread Set and includes work in the following areas: Common Architecture - produces the common, foundational elements of the OGC Technical Architecture, common to all OGC Interoperability Program Initiatives. This effort will address an OGC Services Model, OGC Web Registry Services, and Sensor Markup Language in support of Sensor Web. - Web Mapping - follows Web Mapping Testbed I and II and focuses on producing interoperable Web Map Clients for display and interaction with services such as Web Map Server (raster maps), Web Feature Server (vector data), and Web Coverage Server (imagery). - Sensor Web - addresses interfaces that provide ability to access data from a variety of land, water, air and other sensors via open, direct real time interfaces. The focus of this effort is on development of a Sensor Registry and Data Collection Service that will support a range of sensor interfaces. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency EMPACT Program, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, GeoConnections/Natural Resources Canada, Lockheed Martin, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center currently sponsor OWS-1. Organizations interested in sponsoring this or future threads of OWS are encouraged to review the RFQ and consider funding requirements listed in Annex A. Responses to the RFQ are due August 17, 2001 and the program is expected to begin in late September. Inquiries related to OWS should be addressed to Mr. Jeff Harrison, Director of OGC Interoperability Programs, jharrison [at] opengeospatial [dot] org , or (703) 491-9543. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org . -- end --

Wayland, MA, USA, July 10, 2001 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces that the Call for Participation for the Open Location Services (OpenLS) Testbed is available at http://www.openls.org . The testbed will develop fundamental interfaces and services to allow a wide variety of location solutions to interoperate between infrastructure platforms and wireless devices. Organizations interested in participation or sponsorship of this testbed are invited to OpenLS Day on July 31, 2001 at the Hyatt Regency Reston, Reston VA. At the meeting OGC staff will discuss opportunities for involvement and sponsors will present their goals. There will be time for potential participants to interact and have their questions answered. Details are available at http://www.openls.org/Events/infoday.htm . Today, the use of open standards in this fast growing sector is limited. The results of this testbed will help increase the ability of location based services to operate across the various networks and platforms that characterize the global wireless market and to stimulate best of breed application services for meeting wireless customer requirements. Sponsors of the testbed include Hutchison 3G UK, ESRI with SignalSoft, Oracle with Webraska, Sun Microsystems, and In-Q-Tel. In October 2001, U.S. phone carriers will be required by law to be able to identify the location of cell phone callers. Commercial location aware applications for people on the move are becoming increasingly valuable in addition to uses in emergency response, public safety, and disaster management. Realizing the full value of location services depends on consistent communication across different regions, technology platforms, networks, application domains, and classes of products. This testbed addresses this requirement. The OpenLS Testbed follows several other successful OGC testbeds where technology developers worked in a hands-on collaborative environment to develop candidate interoperability interfaces, which were then implemented in their technology offerings. Participants gain firsthand knowledge of interfaces and are often the first to implement the final specifications in products for the global market. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org and the OpenLS website at www.openls.org . -- end --

Wayland, MA, USA, June 26, 2001 - The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announces the successful demonstration of an operational geospatial fusion implementation at In-Q-Tel by an international vendor team. Geospatial fusion refers to the ability of interoperable technologies to integrate text with geoprocessing and web based services. For this demonstration, In-Q-Tel funded the integration of commercial component software, with integration made possible by candidate OpenGIS interfaces developed last year in OGC's Geospatial Fusion Services Testbed (GFST). The prototype system was built to evaluate the potential of OpenGIS interface-enabled Geospatial Fusion Services (GFS) technology in an operational setting. The vendor team included Ionic Software, Social Change Online, Polexis, Galdos Systems, ESRI, SAIC and Lockheed Martin. The demonstration was the conclusion of the Geospatial Fusion Pilot Project (GFPP), part of OGC's Interoperability Program. The demonstration showed three services working together: a geoparser (capturing geographic references in text), a gazetteer (using a dictionary of place names and their associated location) and a geocoder (putting the location on a dynamic digital map). Together these services would allow a researcher for example, to explore a dynamic, viewable map automatically filled with details based on text from a series of news articles and other documents. The application that builds the map might use a geoparser to search out geographic references in the text, consult a gazetteer to find the coordinates of each location, and then turn to a geocoder to post the location as a link on the map. The series of links (for instance, to imagery or related text articles) on a map can be packaged together in a Location Organizer Folder (LOF). This folder is an XML document created to share the results of a work session with any one else who has LOF client software. OGC and the pilot team envision a variety of geoparser, gazetteer and geocoder services, all with common interfaces, available on the Web and hosted by a variety of organizations worldwide. Common interfaces will assure that any combination of services can be brought together for a task and that the resulting information can be shared using a LOF. Students, analysts and professionals in education, the military, health care, crime prevention, marketing and many other disciplines can take advantage of this unique, interoperable and expandable way to look at information and its relationships. The Geospatial Fusion Services pilot validated the value of geospatial fusion services to initiative sponsors and participants and illustrated the flexibility and utility of these technologies. The technologies used in the Pilot will move into OGC's OpenGIS specification program to be considered as additions to the current list of OpenGIS Implementation Specifications. About In-Q-Tel, Inc. In-Q-Tel is a venture catalyst that combines strategic investing with technology expertise to partner with the world's leading information technology innovators. In-Q-Tel's strategy is guided by the needs of one of the most demanding technology customers in the world-the Central Intelligence Agency. In-Q-Tel is a private, not-for-profit company contracted by the CIA to identify and deliver the next generation of information technologies to support the CIA's critical intelligence missions. For entrepreneurs, In-Q-Tel offers a source of capital, and access to technical expertise and power users with some of the toughest enterprise IT problems today. For venture partners we bring an expert in-house technical team and agile and highly rigorous technical due diligence process. We also bring a team of experienced business builders and leaders who are committed to growing great companies that develop great products. In-Q-Tel has partnered with more than sixteen IT companies since launching bi-coastal operations in Northern Virginia and Menlo Park, California in the fall of 1999. Additional information about In-Q-Tel is available at www.in-q-tel.org . About OGC, Inc. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org . -- end --

June 19, 2001, Wayland, MA, USA - The Open GIS Consortium (OGC) has had its biennial election of directors with the result that eight sitting directors have been re-elected and three new directors have been elected. New directors are nominated by the board and are elected by the OGC Planning Committee, which includes the consortium's Principal Members and which oversees implementation of OGC's technology development plan in accordance with strategic directions set by the board. OGC directors are elected as individuals and do not represent the companies with which they are professionally affiliated. OGC's policy is to attract directors to its board who represent an appropriate spectrum of professional and industry experience and who are able to reflect objectively the real requirements and movements of the market and community that OGC serves. The three new directors are Robert King, President of MSR, Inc.; Preetha Pulusani, Executive Vice President for Mapping/GIS & Intergraph India, Ltd. at Intergraph Corporation; and SJ Camarata, Director of Corporate Strategies for ESRI, Inc. Reelected OGC directors include: Carl Cargill, Director of Corporate Standards, Sun Microsystems; Robert Corell, Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Senior Fellow of the American Meteorological Society; Lawrence Fritz, First Vice President of ISPRS and Sr. Staff Scientist at Lockheed Martin Corp; Emil Horvath, Director of the USDA/NRCS Information Technology Institute, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; Fred Limp, Director, Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) and Professor of Anthropology & Adjunct Professor of Geography, University of Arkansas; Ulrich Neunfinger, President & CEO, SICAD Geomatics; Jack Pellicci, Group Vice President, Business Development, Oracle Service Industries, Oracle Corporation; and Akihiro Yamaura, Assistant General Manager, Aerospace Division, Mitsubishi Corporation. Robert King is President of MSR, Inc., a provider of consulting services in the areas of Strategic Business Development and Program Planning and Controls. He recently served as a member of the Independent Commission on the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA Commission) established by the FY2000 Defense Appropriations Bill. Mr. King has been a valuable advisor to OGC management on business practice and strategy since before OGC was founded in 1994. Preetha Pulusani is Executive Vice President for Mapping/GIS & Intergraph India, Ltd. at Intergraph Corporation. She is responsible for the management of Intergraph's Mapping and GIS product business unit, as well as the management of Intergraph India, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Intergraph positioned for an IPO in India. Since 1995, as the first Principal Member representative to OGC, she has worked enthusiastically with OGC staff to support OGC and ensure the success of OpenGIS in the market. SJ Camarata is currently Director of Corporate Strategies for ESRI, Inc., Redlands, CA, where he focuses on worldwide corporate initiatives including internet and wireless business strategies, Location Services initiatives, joint ventures, eBusiness / eCommerce marketing and global strategic partnerships. Mr. Camarata's experience covers a wide range of operational areas in corporate management as well as marketing & sales, strategic planning, and the development of strategic partnerships and joint ventures in multiple industries. The board includes three members of OGC's executive staff. In addition to the two executive staff members who hold continuing appointments to the board, David Schell, President & Chairman, and Kurt Buehler, VP-CTO & Vice Chairman, a third staff member, Jeffrey Burnett, VP-CFO, has been added to the director list. Mr. Burnett joined OGC in April of 2000 as VP of Operations and Finance, with primary responsibility for OGC's business plan and operational management. Mr. Burnett joined OGC from Applied Analysis, Inc. of Billerica, MA after a long career in information technology, including product and business management positions with DEC, MassComp, and Harte-Hanks Response Management. David Schell, OGC's President, commented, "Like the consortium itself, the OGC board of directors has a significant role to play in the OpenGIS consensus process. It is our board that provides a strategic compass for the work of the entire organization, and it is the board that is responsible for ensuring that the strategic objectives of the corporation are underwritten by an effective business plan. Every two years we refresh our board with new talent and perspective, while preserving a core of experience and understanding in order to ensure continuity of vision as we respond to the evolving geospatial requirements of the IT community. I am particularly pleased with the composition of the new board for the 2001-2002 term of office, and grateful for the interest and experience that our new directors bring to the OGC community effort. " OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org . -- end --

Wayland, MA, June 1, 2001. Open GIS Consortium, Inc. announced today that IBM is a Principal Member of the Open GIS Consortium (OGC). As a Principal Member, IBM will participate in OGC's Planning and Technical Committees. In the area of geospatial technology as in other disciplines and technologies, IBM recognizes, promotes, and supports industry standards in order to better serve its customers with solutions that improve productivity and reduce costs. "As a leader in driving industry standards adoption, IBM is pleased to be helping the OGC build a standards platform for communication of spatial information," said Jim Kelly, vice president of marketing, IBM Data Management Solutions. "This innovative technology will help customers rapidly build and deploy e-business solutions requiring spatial information." For over 30 years, IBM has provided GIS (Geographical Information Systems) offerings focused on particular industries. As a major business systems provider, IBM works to help customers in all industries achieve efficient and effective management and integration of geospatial data with business data. In response to customer demand, IBM and ESRI, a major GIS tools vendor, jointly developed the DB2 Spatial Extender, enabling DB2 Universal Database customers to perform powerful spatial analysis. IBM's GIS solutions include not only services, but also integration with other IBM business intelligence technologies such as data mining and data warehousing, pervasive computing, and a variety of business partner tools. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities working together to develop geoprocessing standards. OGC's OpenGIS Specifications establish common geoprocessing interfaces and protocols that are "geo-enabling" the Web, enabling developers to make complex geographic and non-graphic spatial information accessible and useful to people who are not GIS experts. By working closely with OGC, IBM can provide critical input and participate in the process of developing these innovative technologies. IBM will then help customers build and deliver their own geospatial offerings, offerings that help make "time and space" part of their own information economy. -- end --

June 07, 2001, Wayland, MA, USA - At the June meeting of the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC), Arliss Whiteside received OGC's third annual Kenneth G. Gardels Award. The Gardels Award, a gold medallion, is awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to advance the vision of the OGC. Arliss Whiteside is a member of the Mission Solutions Division at BAE Systems, a global systems, defense and aerospace company based in San Diego, California. Mr. Whiteside represents the company in the Technical Committee of the OGC. He is currently chairman of the Image Exploitation Services Special Interest Group. Active since 1997, he has contributed significantly to the material currently included in the OpenGIS Abstract Specification on the subjects of image geometry models, accuracy metadata, services architecture, and catalog services. He has worked tirelessly on topics ranging from coordinate reference systems and transformations to image exploitation. Educated as an electrical engineer, Mr. Whiteside became involved in photogrammetry in 1961, when he programmed the general-purpose and special-purpose computers used within the first computerized stereoplotter (or analytical stereoplotter). Since then, he has contributed to the design and implementation of a series of more extensive computerized photogrammetric systems, mostly for the United States National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and its predecessors. His work included a series of automated stereoplotters for the production of elevation and feature data. In a letter to Mr. Whiteside, the OGC Board of Directors noted that Mr. Whiteside's contribution has helped to significantly advance the Consortium's programs. The letter concludes saying, "By contributing so much of your personal energy and idealism to building and directing the OpenGIS process, you have made a contribution of great value to the world community which we serve, and you have played a unique role in realizing the vision which inspired this award." The award is given annually in memory of Kenneth Gardels, one of the founding directors of OGC and OGC's director of academic programs. Mr. Gardels coined the term "Open GIS," and devoted his life to the humane and democratic uses of GIS. He passed away in 1999. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org . -- end --

Wayland, MA, USA, May 25, 2001 - The Open GIS Consortium's (OGC) European subsidiary, the Open GIS Consortium (Europe) Ltd. (OGCE) and the Landesvermessungsamt (Surveying and Mapping Agency) of the German State of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) have agreed to collaborate on a Pilot Project that uses OpenGIS specification conformant commercial products. NRW and the City of Cologne will execute the pilot and OGCE will advise and assist as needed. This will be the first Pilot Project for which OGCE has provided interoperability planning services. NRW is unique in Germany because data for land ownership is managed not at the state level, but by large cities and counties. The variety of software tools used across the state has provided extensive technological freedom, but has made data sharing difficult. The goal of the project is to provide an integrated method to share and exploit spatial information acquired from distributed sources located across government sites in Cologne, and to provide feedback into the OGC Specification Program. The Pilot will involve common access and display of data from several internal GIS databases, including land ownership records, base map information from the Landesvermessungsamt itself and several other departments in the city government. This project highlights several hallmarks of interoperability. The participating departments will not need to change their existing software, but rather extend it, to work with other software. The architecture proposed will be built in part using local expertise, assuring the development of in country experience to grow the project further. Finally, NRW Pilot Project is a key implementation of OGC specifications in a local government setting, an important step for communities worldwide. Heinz Brüggemann, of the Ministry of the Interior and member of the GI-Committee of North Rhine Westphalia, explains the vision of the project. "The project is part of a state-wide initiative of NRW to establish typical solutions for network integrated geographic information systems. The technology will serve the NRW state, city and county offices as parts of a general geographic data infrastructure of the state called GDI NRW. Within this infrastructure, Internet access will be available to all public and private geographic information available in NRW. All participants have signed a Common Manifesto for Interoperability and have committed to apply the standards of the Open GIS Consortium and the ISO/TC 211 whenever they are available." The collaboration will begin May 28 in Cologne. Demonstrations of the outcome are expected later this year. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing specifications. OpenGIS Specifications establish common interfaces that "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. OGC (Europe) Limited, an OGC subsidiary, was established to better address European interoperability needs, and to increase OGC presence for European members. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org . -- end --

Wayland, MA, May 18, 2001, The Open GIS Consortium (OGC) announced today the successful launch of its Military Pilot Project Initiative, Phase 1 (MPP-1). MPP-1, which began April 5 and will run through September 2001, has been organized to test and exercise newly developed OGC specifications in a near-operational user environment. At the end of a Pilot, major customers will see real world proof of interoperability between software products from different vendors enabled by interfaces implementing OpenGIS Specifications. MPP-1 is a collaborative effort that tests the interoperability of commercial geoprocessing products in the defense and intelligence domain. Findings contribute to the refinement of the OpenGIS® Specifications that define the products' interoperability interfaces. For example, MPP-1 will help enhance OpenGIS Specifications to accommodate three-dimensional photo-realistic terrain views over the Internet. The Initiative's sponsors, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) and In-Q-Tel, have provided funding and operational requirements for the pilot. Cubewerx, Intergraph, Skyline Software, Syncline, Lockheed Martin, Compusult, University of Alabama in Huntsville, 3i, Ionic Software, Polexis, and Laser-Scan have been selected to participate in MPP-1 by providing technology solutions that adhere to Sponsor requirements and employ OGC interfaces. In MPP-1, users simulate defense and intelligence operations that access online intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance data sources via restricted access intranets and the Internet. The emphasis is on expanding users' ability to discover, visualize, and add value to geodata by expanding their network of web-based interoperable geoprocessing resources. MPP-1 exercises many of the open interfaces developed in OGC's Web Mapping Testbeds. In recent months many vendors have released commercial products that implement these interfaces, increasing a users' ability to find and immediately use data that was previously unavailable because of differences between geoprocessing systems. Open interfaces remove many barriers to data and GIS service use. A growing number of US Department of Defense Coordinating Organizations and projects are becoming involved in MPP-1. Coordinating Organizations are using software "toolkits" to access a restricted section of OGCN, OGC's new OGCNetwork web resource. OGCN is an online forum for information exchange and a portal to on-line resources such as servers, service registries, clients, schemas, DTD's (digital instructions for interpreting and presenting XML-encoded geospatial data, i.e. OGC's GML), tutorials, reusable software components, user documentation, and links to related sites. Many military Coordinating Organizations currently use commercial products that vendors are now "opening up" with interfaces that implement OpenGIS Specifications. This makes it easy for these organizations to connect to MPP-1's network of spatial resources. Knowledge gained in the Pilot will enable Coordinating Organizations to continue testing and deploying interoperable products after MPP-1 ends. Dan Specht, Project Manager at TEC representing ERDC in MPP-1, said, "The testbed process we use in MPP-1 is an extremely cost-effective way to develop interoperable software in the short run, and we believe that it will result in lower maintenance costs in the long run." The companies providing technology and expertise for MPP-1 all share the objective of making their products work smoothly with other vendors' products in a heterogeneous network environment. They all share the ultimate goal of selling their products and services broadly, to civil government and commercial customers as well as military customers. OGC seeks additional public sector and private sector sponsors to participate in current and planned Interoperability Initiatives. New proposals are welcomed. OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available, widely implemented geoprocessing interface and protocol specifications. These standards "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org . -- end --