TRILLIUM SOFTWARE INSIGHTS

Cloud Rolls In

 By Richard Wilson, Vice President, Product Strategy, Harte-Hanks Trillium Software

Over and above the stormy conditions that businesses are experiencing in their core markets, a new information paradigm rises overhead – “the Cloud.” 

It promises vast resources and drastically reduced costs, modeled on and leveraging the Web. It offers access to reams of reference data, applications and supporting systems.  I’ll bet you some bright and socially-wired individual out there is going to make “Webillions” creating the first iTunes for organizing the applications and data sources that are already available out there on the Cloud. 

In the context of many promises and risks, the Cloud also threatens to completely change the paradigm for how a business manages data.  And that casts a shadow on the way companies do business now.   

Things will not be like the relatively safe world within a firewall.  It is not just the risk of storing data in a different physical (virtual) environment, but the Cloud introduces other risks too such as application management, access to data, reporting and analysis, and data security. 

Companies will solve the access control problems associated with storing data on the cloud, as the fences around corporate data have been receding steadily for at least a decade now. 

But a new information management structure is emerging –the economics are just too compelling for it not to.  Yet, in order to embrace something as evanescent as the Cloud, organizations must have a precise track of their current trajectory, a strong internal compass, and a picture of what success looks like when you arrive at your planned destination and goals.  That’s a lot like sailing – in low clouds.

It will not be easy, but navigating the Cloud will be a journey worth being aboard. 

In a follow up, I will talk about what some of our “best and brightest” customers are doing to align their data in ways that are highly adaptable to the cloud.

Location, Location, Location! - A look at the world of geocoding

By Ed Wrazen, Vice President, Product Marketing, Harte-Hanks Trillium Software

Location intelligence is one of the fastest-growing technology trends in the world, enabling consumers and companies alike to make better, more informed business decisions. Widespread adoption and use of mapping and geospatial applications has resulted in more and more reliance on location data than ever before.

We now have satellite navigation systems to point our cars in the right direction, Internet mapping tools to show us where we need to be, mobile applications on our cell phones to locate restaurants, bars, shops.  And it all comes down to what are known as geocodes – latitude and longitude coordinates. Once the domain of geospatial and mapping professionals only, geocodes are now commonly used in a wide range of consumer, business and public sector applications.

For example, location is everything in the real estate business. Buying a property on the wrong side of town or outside the boundary of a particularly popular school could result in several thousand dollars difference in valuation.  Having accurate address data up front, before a purchasing decision is made, is important.  However, for certain business applications, an address is just not precise enough. 

Take postal services for instance, a correct address will ensure you receive mail promptly. But knowing whether a property is at one end of a street or another makes a big difference if the street is 5 miles long, and your business is a logistics company, delivering millions of packages a year around the globe. Knowing exactly where a property is located on a street, can save, time, fuel, labor and other related costs.  Aggregated across thousands of properties, it soon adds up. But its not just logistics operations, many businesses are exploiting geocodes for their location intelligence too.

Geocodes, simply put, are mapping coordinates, expressed as latitude and longitude that provide precise geospatial coordinates for a particular location.  Often, they are assigned based on address data – street, postcode, city, country information supplied. The more precise and accurate the address data, the more precise and accurate the geocodes assigned.

But, many geospatial applications do not validate, cleanse and enrich address data, prior to assigning a geocode, nor do they support international address data at all well.  Hence, we are now seeing wider adoption and use of data quality solutions tightly coupled with geocoding technologies to dynamically enhance location intelligence.  

There are many applications and uses of geocoding across all industries. In my next blog on this subject, I will provide some specific industry examples on the use and benefits of precise geocode data.   However, in the meantime, if you want to understand more about geocoding and geocodes, check out our white paper.  How are you using location intelligence in your business and what benefits are you achieving with it?