I don’t know if Brian remembers or not, but we (www.WeoGeo.com) were at Location Intelligence in San Francisco showing this exact solution. Adena Schutzberg at Directions Magazine mentioned it briefly here (http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2448&trv=1) and here (http://www.directionsmag.com/podcast.php?id=2469).

The geospatial market will change when skills and content are valued as highly as the infrastructure and sales channels. What Google doesn’t have is the millions of qualified mapping professionals who know their business. They (Google) want your content for free, so that they can sell advertising on top of it. It would be very hard to compete with Google in their sphere.

Another approach is the one we have built on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This (neo)mapping market directly connects content providers with content users, allowing the providers to set the price for their product. Consider it an “Ebay” for mapping skills and content. AWS gives us the reach and scalability to provide people like your reader the ability to do their jobs, be paid for their skills, and participate in this growing internet mapping community.

Looks like http://www.weogeo.com may be headed in that direction, and might even become a platform for others to do the same with http://weoceo.weogeo.com.

that being said, there is always another way to skin the cat and the Ec2/S3 combination is too good to ignore. GeoServices that expect resource addressable input (think REST) in common formats could be implemented on EC2 right now

cheers
brian

@James: As for The Timoney Group commercializing an open source stack on EC2, my marketing people tells me there’s little money to be made in “GIS”. However, perhaps if we market it as “stuff-you-can-overlay-in-Google-Earth”, the VC spigots would be wide open

@vector: The database bit is a known limitation of EC2 at this time, although there seems to be some very creative MySQL implementations as a workaround. So while it may not be appropriate right now as a persistent repository, it seems to be you could automate the data upload/data processing/download results routine and still have a time- and cost-effective solution.

BT

But his point is well taken. The old traditional method is dead and companies that don’t change are destined to fail.

Investing you time and effort on the Web ADF and big ass AGS servers is not the way forward. The google method of server farms is. Might as well embrace it.

Compete against google? Nope, but for any of us to not try and improve our own offerings is suicide. The Web ADF and ArcGIS is a dinosaur and shouldn’t be used.

Well put. How many people are actually going head to head with Google, i.e. making a point to point route server on commercial nationwide data?

“This may be an over simplification but I am relieved to pass the torch of supporting ubiquitous and generalized web mapping applications to the googles, yahoos, mapquests, and microsofts of the world so I can concentrate on the more complex and specialized solution requirements that the suite of commercial applications can’t address.”

I think that is how you “compete” with Google- do something they cannot do and give people an answer that Google cannot give them. You compete by making the topmost layer, not by reproducing the bottom background layer.

As for competing with Google… why fight? I find it curious how many GIS professionals view the new commercial GIS apps (Google Earth, Virtual Earth, et et) as a threat rather than an asset. Our network staff doesn’t “compete” with dell, ibm, sun, microsoft, linux, et et et. They assist business experts in leveraging their resources toward specific requirements rather than try to keep up with the vendor’s product lines and services. If Google Earth meets someone’s specified requirements more effectively and efficiently than ArcIMS; great. What’s important is their problem is solved. This may be an over simplification but I am relieved to pass the torch of supporting ubiquitous and generalized web mapping applications to the googles, yahoos, mapquests, and microsofts of the world so I can concentrate on the more complex and specialized solution requirements that the suite of commercial applications can’t address. The everyday web map has been commoditized… hallelujah.