INTERGEO Karlsruhe Germany

This week I took the long road to Karsruhe in southern Germany to visit our Germany Business Partner grit GmbH, who were exhibiting at INTERGEO and we joined them on their stand. Although the show has now shrunk to two halls, boy it was still worth it. It’s been a very long time since I've been to a show with so much positive feeling around it.

Much of the show was focussed on the German market with customers flocking to the stands to get a glimpse of the future and to understand the technology. We were no different. We had a steady stream of knowledgeable and interested people to the stand. There was a strong international contingent to the customer mix and many were from eastern Europe as well as some from the UK. It seems that INTERGEO is still considered to be the show to visit in Europe for geo people.

What does INSPIRE really mean?

On the downside the INSPIRE message from a lot of the exhibitors was very confusing and poorly articulated. I asked a number of different vendors to explain what they thought INSPIRE was and were they ready to help customers? To my surprise not one company could tell me what INSPIRE meant to its customers. I even had one tell me that their products weren't ready because there was no clear understanding of how it would work.

Well let me clear that one up. Here at Snowflake we understand what INSPIRE is,what it means for your business, we’ve got products ready now that work with the very latest INSPIRE schema's (data translators) and we’ve future proofed the technology so customers can be INSPIRE compliant at no extra cost, or need for additional software. Take a look at our website for more details to see how we can help your understanding of what INSPIRE will mean to you. We can even offer you training.

Was it worth it? Yes.

So was it worth the trip to Germany? Yes it was. I think customers are waking up to the power of intelligent spatial data and mainstream IT technology, which makes for a very interesting conversation for "time served" GIS companies. I had too many customers ask me about the power of the database and how to exploit it, to imagine they really want to go back to dumb lines, arcs and circles. They just need to be shown how to do it and most of all shown the benefits and we can do that in buckets!

A last thought...

My last take away from INTERGEO is this: Customers are increasingly knowledgeable about what they want - real business benefit. I get asked it all the time. So we need to step up and show our customers just that - the advantage of spending money with us. At INTERGEO and at Snowflake that’s what we did and do.

Visit us at INTERGEO next time and see what benefits you can get.