"Cloud GIS" in GIS human eyes"

In recent years, cloud computing has become the most dazzling star in the IT industry. From initial conceptual hyping to gradually being accepted by users, it has developed rapidly in some key industries, the wide scope of impact is staggering.
      When everyone is thinking about how to use the cloud computing service and how to enjoy the value brought by the cloud computing service, cloud GIS appears in front of everyone, because:
      1. Because of its own characteristics, GIS naturally becomes a useful place for cloud computing. For example, massive data storage, massive data storage, and complex model operations.
      2. The value of a map is easy to reflect. As long as a map is published, it can bring value to users and others.

   Below I will collect some of my views on "cloud GIS" in the GIS industry to help you think about it together:
   1. ESRI: cloud computing brings new opportunities to GIS, such as cloud computing, SAAS, and virtualization. The release of new concepts puts users in the "Clouds and clouds ", just listen to the vendor's "self-developed theory ". The concept is just a rhetoric. What is important is what new technology it brings? New application? New advantages? The combination of GIS and cloud computing is also assessed in this way. Although everyone supports cloud computing, What Is Cloud? What is computing? What does cloud computing bring to GIS? This is the most important issue for users.
   At an activity, Dr. Jing Guifei, deputy director of the National Remote Sensing Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said that Chinese GIS needs "Cloud" and "computing", but it is not suitable for "cloud computing" currently ". Dr. Jing stressed that this is not because cloud computing is not suitable, instead, we should emphasize that cloud computing is still a tool for geographic information applications and services, reminding everyone not to give up.
   ESRI is the world's first manufacturer that truly supports cloud architecture GIS platform products. In an interview with the Chinese software network, Cai Xiaobing explained the three different concepts of cloud, computing, and cloud computing that he understands.
   "Cloud" refers to the infrastructure environment, that is, "IAAs" (Infrastructure as a service). IT vendors, such as Amazon, IBM, and some telecom operators, such as China Telecom and China Mobile, these enterprises are or have already set up an environment and provide elastic leasing services for computing resources based on this. This is the foundation of the "Cloud" model. Without such an environment, the platform, software, and content services (PAAs, SAAS, and CAAS) built on it cannot be discussed, it cannot take root. "computing" is the core and essence of any information technology. Without "computing", all models are empty shell. Therefore, for GIS, this basic environment and service model are indispensable.

Cai Xiaobing believes that our focus on the "Cloud" model is on how to better play the role of computing under the specific virtualization technology support model, let Information bring us real value. Therefore, for GIS, we need to consider how GIS can play a better role in this new model and environment, how to solve the problem of information islands that we have been facing for a long time, how to solve the problem of repeated construction investment, and how to solve the severe challenges that popular applications pose to the GIS platform architecture for ultra-large-scale concurrent access. When we talk about "cloud computing" or "cloud GIS ", it is actually about how GIS platforms, software, and geospatial information can be conveniently and efficiently deployed on the "Cloud" infrastructure, it can provide the most extensive web-based services in an elastic and On-Demand manner. GIS vendors should pay attention to the services to be implemented on the cloud and how to implement changes in the architecture to adapt to and meet application needs in the cloud environment.
   Cloud computing GIS will provide a stable, efficient, low-cost and environmentally friendly supporting architecture, allowing GIS to completely break through existing "professional circles" and bring the space information services and value-added services to the public, it brings small and medium-sized enterprises and even individual operators who have no strength to build their own GIS application platforms from start to end, thus achieving a revolutionary breakthrough in GIS and greatly expanding their market scale.
   According to Cai Xiaobing, ESRI has launched the GIS platform product ArcGIS 10 supporting the cloud architecture, realizing the five major leaps of collaborative GIS, integrated GIS, Three-dimensional GIS, spatial-temporal GIS, and cloud GIS. Among them, the cloud GIS leap is to achieve the GIS platform deployment and service model in the cloud.
   From the GIS market in China and the world, with the accelerated integration of GIS and mainstream IT technologies, the trend of large-scale and popular GIS applications has become very obvious. The cloud computing model will bring a good opportunity for GIS development. Whether or not we can seize this opportunity depends on the accumulation of GIS technologies and the ability to track and absorb the latest mainstream IT technologies. Chinese GIS manufacturers and other international GIS platform manufacturers will all face the test. The key is to keep up with the development trend.

   2. mountain sea latitude and longitude:

When GIS stands on the cloud computing platform & nbsp; in recent years, the emergence of the cloud computing platform has accelerated the industrialization of GIS. With the arrival of the cloud computing era, the GIS industry is currently at the crossroads of the third technological transformation for more than GIS software developers and tens of thousands of developers in China, when this transformation is accelerating, Will Cloud computing bring a fundamental leap to the development of GIS?
   Private cloud will become an important development direction
   Wang Sheng, director of R & D center of Shanhai Jingwei Information Technology Co., Ltd., interviewed the current situation of "cloud computing" in the Chinese market. Wang Sheng believes that from the perspective of the development history of the Internet, from the emergence to maturity of a technology, it has to go through the initial phase, the bubble period, the low tide period, and the maturity period. Currently, cloud computing is in the initial phase of the bubble. Everyone is talking about cloud computing, but what is cloud computing, what can be done is not clear yet. Specifically, in the GIS field, it may be more vague. It is still unclear how to use cloud computing to provide GIS services and bring long-term value to customers, therefore, the discussion of these concepts remains at the theoretical stage and lacks the practical foundation. However, this does not mean that we can despise this technology. In fact, this is a crucial technology for the development of GIS technology.
   Wang Sheng said: Every technological change in it will have a disruptive impact on GIS, for example, PC to desktop GIS, and Internet to WebGIS and large space databases. We believe that, the application and popularization of cloud computing technologies will bring about the same changes. From the user's point of view, after the IT infrastructure changes, it will inevitably put forward new demands for GIS. With the accumulation of massive data, traditional GIS software is no longer powerful, new computing methods also need to be sought. Cloud computing provides a promising solution.
As for the current GIS market in China, there may be some problems in the public cloud business model due to confidentiality and other reasons, but private cloud-based applications will become a very important direction.
   Indeed, from the perspective of purpose, the establishment of private cloud is the fastest and most realistic. According to the latest Gartner survey, 46% of IT budget management professionals have budgeted for cloud computing and plan to increase the use of cloud services provided by external suppliers, but most of the respondents are expected, spending on Private clouds within the building or only for enterprise use will increase, with a higher proportion than that on public clouds. To a certain extent, this indicates that at this stage, enterprises have more urgent demands for Private clouds, especially the construction of Private clouds belonging to enterprises.
Cloud era: Opportunities and challenges coexist
   Wang Sheng said that although some products of Shanhai Jingwei can already run on the open-source cloud computing platform, how can we make full use of the features of the cloud computing platform and connect it with the existing technical system, building a truly competitive solution, rather than simply upgrading the original technology, is a very challenging task.
   Shan haiwei is still worried about the application prospects of cloud computing in the GIS industry: GIS vendors are facing great challenges in business models and technical preparation to implement cloud computing, although there is already a good framework for providing spatial information data and services based on large-scale cloud computing platforms in foreign countries, to achieve this in China, we need to face some policy restrictions, there is no good way to make profits in the short term. Therefore, the primary consideration is the commercial strategy in the private cloud environment, including the provision of software and services. In terms of technology, simply porting existing software through virtualization is a shortcut, but it is necessary to combine more existing services and directly consider solving existing business problems on the cloud computing platform, in this way, products that are truly innovative and competitive will be generated. Of course, this requires higher technical reserves.

   3. Beijing huitu Information Technology Co., Ltd. Difficulties and confusions of GIS Manufacturers
   In the face of the emergence of cloud computing, compared with technical problems, Chinese GIS vendors have encountered more severe problems at the strategic level. Because the existence of the cloud is completely different from the traditional service form in the past, the traditional service architecture and technical model tend to be homogeneous, and the "Cloud" will completely change this homogeneity, it also achieves specialization in the underlying architecture.
   Zhang yuesheng said: whether GIS vendors can realize this and develop cloud GIS Based on this idea, rather than based on mainstream platforms, will be the key to the future market direction. If it is based on a mainstream platform, there will be high dependence and a loss of multi-level performance.
   In addition, the huge talent gap is also a headache for domestic GIS manufacturers. At present, there is a huge gap in core professional development talents in GIS, and only a strong talent team can make achievements in development and innovation. However, to solve this problem, it is a long-term and arduous task to combine the investment layout of our education system, manufacturers, and the entire IT industry and work together.

Cloud computing is essentially different from "Cloud" and "computing ".

Dr. Jing Guifei, deputy director of the National Remote Sensing Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, believes that in the current Internet situation, cloud computing is a concept with distinctive characteristics and needs to be treated with caution, as a product of the development of the information age to a certain stage, cloud computing has a huge impact on real life because of a combination of factors. At present, we have seen a variety of good ideas about "cloud computing", mostly based on the fact that we owe all our achievements to the "cloud computing" layer.
   Jing Guifei believes that, in essence, cloud computing has the most basic difference with "Cloud" and "computing". In the current Internet environment, most industry personnel do not strictly distinguish this concept. In the traditional sense, cloud computing ", it is a content service aggregation provided by various platforms and products that combine the basic hardware environment, server-based service content, and architecture in this aspect. However, in real life, if a single vendor wants to fully integrate the cloud computing service, it is necessary to require aggregation of these three conditions. According to the current market conditions, it is not just the GIS field, but also in many other industries: the full implementation of the current cloud computing model requires a long-term process in the current Internet situation.
   Therefore, Jing Guifei believes that the cloud computing era is an inevitable trend, but in the current market situation, such a trend cannot appear immediately; chinese GIS requires "Cloud" and "computing", but this is a phase of gradual change. If GIS vendors do not follow suit, the results can only bring results out of the actual situation.

   Source: http://bbs.esrichina-bj.cn/esri/thread-87134-1-1.html