March 2009 Archives

Due to Snowflake Software's continued growth the company has appointed a Marketing Executive in the form of Emma Williams, an ambitious marketing graduate with bags of creative potential and talent. Emma will be working alongside Phil Lines Sales Director, to help grow Snowflake Software, raise awareness and push adoption of Snowflake products in existing and new markets.

Emma previously worked for a leading supplier in standby power solutions as a Marketing Manager and played a key role in growing the business from £1m turnover to £12m turnover. Emma says ' I am really excited to be joining such a dynamic company in a strong state of growth. I will be looking to bring my experience in Marketing strategy, online marketing and product knowledge to the role to push the company forward."

'As Snowflake continues to grow and starts to open up new markets we require excellent new talent to help position our products and help the customer make the most of GML and now increasingly XML' says Phil Lines. ' Emma brings to Snowflake great experience from a different industry which will strengthen our outlook and provide us with a new approach'.

Snowflake continues to grow to meet customer demand here and abroad and Emma is just one of three new employees this month to help with the work load.

For more information please contact Snowflake Software on +44 (0) 23 8038 6577 or www.snowflakesoftware.com or info@snowflakesoftware.com

Phil and I had 3 days in the Netherlands last week seeing customers and attending the ATC Conference in Amsterdam. As I've blogged previously, GML seems to popping up all over the place these days. In this instance we were on a fact finding mission to see how Snowflake’s GO Publisher product could help with the implementation of D-AIM (Digital Aeronautical Information Management). The primary goal of D-AIM is to establish a framework for the information exchange of Aeronautical, Airport and Weather information. To achieve this, the industry has been developing various exchange models using open standards such as those from W3C, OGC and ISO. One such exchange model is AIXM5 (Aeronautical Information eXchange Model). Developed by Eurocontrol and FAA, AIXM5 is a GML 3.2.1 standard for the exchange for Aeronautical information.

As some of you may know Snowflake has been working with AIXM5 in the latest OWS6 testbed where our role has been to prove that AIXM5 could be delivered using WFS and that the temporal elements of AIXM could be queried using WFS. We’re pretty much complete on OWS6 and it’s been incredibly successful for all involved. Given this, attending ATC was great opportunity to see how Snowflake can position its technology and expertise in AIM marketplace. With the likes of Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockhead Martin and Thales exhibiting I’ve never seen so many high end exhibition stands, widescreen tvs, 3d visualisations, aircraft cockpits, control stations and of course plenty of free cardboard aeroplanes!

ATC was impressive and a very busy place, 20,000 people pass through the doors over the 3 days. As well as massive conference there were also plenty of free workshops and hands on seminars to attend. As it’s new to Snowflake it was great to attend, listen and just take it all in, it’s been ages since I’ve gone to show and written so much down.I’ve now got a much better understand of the AIM marketplace and where our products fit.

So what did I make of the ATC Conference? Well from Snowflake's viewpoint its the same opportunity we see in all of our markets - organisations want interoperability and data exchange and they see standards such as GML and WFS as a way to achieve this.  Given this, there's a great opportunity for all involved in the OGC world - we're certainly committed to the D-AIM marketplace and you'll be seeing a lot more about our D-AIM offering in the not so distant future - watch this space.

I needed to visit our newest Business Partner grit GmbH in Germany and so took the opportunity to meet them at the CeBIT show in Hanover this week.

I booked my tickets and pitched up at the venue to discover for the first time, a very large (I would even say massive) IT showcase with 20 halls containing every major systems integrator, software vendor, hardware vendor, government department and university of virtually every country. If that weren't enough the 'Governater' (Arnold Schwarzeneggar) was here in person in the California hall! Even though I was told that attendance was down by around 20%, the place was buzzing and full of customers.

I arranged to meet our partner Grit who were based in Hall 9 on the Fujitsu Siemens stand. I found it hard to get their attention, customers were coming thick and fast and interest was high. What was all the fuss about?  Well to keep this story short, we were in the Federal State Government section for Germany "Landesvermessung" where there's a huge drive towards providing better information services to the public.  Grit was showing how this could be achieved with spatial databases being accessed via WMS/WFS technology and their demonstrations looked very well received.

So what did I learn from my visit? Well from my time at the show and listening to Grit, opportunities in Europe around OGC services and GML in the enterprise are growing fast and Snowflake needs to make sure it keeps pace and provides the right solutions to its Partners. With guidance from Grit I'm certain there's going to be plenty of opportunities going forward.

I enjoyed my time with Grit and my first time at CeBIT, in fact, I would have liked to have stayed longer, but as the Governator said in his previous job ...  "I'll be back".