I spoke to the founders of Safe Software, Don Murray and Dale Lutz, last week about FME 2009, the latest release of their data interoperability toolset. I’ve known these two for a long time, having enlisted their expertise for the Canadian GIS Conference as far back as 2001. I’ve always enjoyed their enthusiasm for their product, and the fun they have delving into the nuances of software formats and interoperability.
The motivations that they have for their work are compelling, as their products solve some very painful problems. For instance, say you’re a large utility that just bought another large utility, but all the details about your critical assets are stored on two different GIS systems that are incompatible. One of the major reasons for consolidating the two systems is that you’ll be able to combine operations and increase efficiencies, but the two entirely different systems are a barrier to reaching that goal. Here’s where Safe steps in and saves the day, helping to make both systems work together, and often rather quickly.
Need for Speed
But, it’s not just enough to solve the problem of format compatibility so that the least amount of information gets lost between software packages. To make a product that you’re proud of requires a commitment to all the details of your business. Outside of the relatively bounded niche of being the “Switzerland” of the geospatial community, providing a means for cooperation among competing software applications, Safe Software is also in the business of creating software.
To design truly customer friendly software, there are some basic rules to follow, such as being easy to use, being easy to maintain and upgrade, and not being a burden on your hardware. Safe has focused on a number of usability issues with their release of FME 2009. The company enhanced the user interface, added drag and drop capabilities to several of their tools, and have made a commitment to increase the speed of their application.
The issue of speed is an interesting one, and I asked Don why they chose to focus on that. He explained that he was at a non-GIS software conference where a vendor stated that every new release of their software must improve the speed of operation. Don went back and spoke to Dale about that, and they decided to subscribe to that same philosophy, simply because they thought they could pull it off. And as a result, the new release is in some places 20 percent faster and in others it is nearly 20 times faster. Given the massive amounts of geospatial data these days, these improvements are non-trivial. In some cases the enhancements save not just minutes but days of processing time.
Adapting to Enterprise Demands
Being in the software business also opens up a huge number of software industry trends that need to be monitored and addressed. The issue of operating system is an excellent example of Safe Software’s response to broader issues than just the different data formats of CAD and GIS tools. They also need to be able to run their tools on computers with different operating systems, from Windows and Linux, to UNIX, etc. In this latest release they added support for 64-bit Windows, Linux and Solaris for greater processing power.
Enterprise computing is another area where they’ve been responsive, debuting their Server products last year. The FME Server enables organizations with considerable spatial data holdings to transform their data on the fly and distribute it more widely. Server gives users the tools not just for translation and transformation, but also for validation and consolidation, and Web-based distribution. The services-oriented architecture of this solution opens up a whole wealth of possible configurations, including a foray into cloud computing through WeoGeo.
Continued 3D Development
Safe has recognized the need to support the transformation of 3D data types for a long time. One of their largest markets has been in CAD and GIS compatibility and now with Building Information Modeling coming into play, the need for better handling of model information is growing exponentially. The translation and transformation of 3D data poses some considerable technical challenges though.
Safe cracked these difficult problems last year with support for 3D PDF, IFC and LandXML. With this latest release, the company has added CityGML, Wavefront OBJ and Autodesk 3ds. With these formats supported, organizations can more readily extend the use of their 3D data. One client city — Apeldooorn, Netherlands — has already taken advantage of these capabilities to combine their GIS and CAD data to create a multi-user 3D virtual world online.
A popular topic in the press these days is whether a company or market sector is recession proof. I’d like to think that a company like Safe, that focuses strongly on the customer and innovates well ahead of their customer’s demands, fits that description. As the call for infrastructure spending heats up, there will certainly be ample opportunity to eliminate the pains of incompatible data.
You can read more about the FME 2009 release in both the Safe Insider corporate newsletter and in this fact sheet about What’s Great in FME 2009.
