Well-known GIS (geographic information systems) expert, Wilhelm Herbst, has taken up a new post as CEO of M Squared Investments. Highly respected both locally and internationally in GIS circles, Herbst leaves GIS specialist Computer Foundation where he has been MD for the past six years.

Starting in 1990 as product manager for the well-known, locally developed GIS product, ReGIS, Herbst was with Computer Foundation for over 10 years. He became MD in 1994, at an exciting juncture, both for South Africa as a whole and for the GIS industry when AutoDesk took over the source code of ReGIS. "My position at that time was a very exciting and challenging one and we were afforded the opportunity and privilege of working on many groundbreaking GIS projects at the highest levels," says Herbst.

During his tenure at Computer Foundation Herbst headed up many very daunting GIS projects. These included implementing a GIS to identify all state-owned land for the purposes of queries and decision making for the Directorate of Surveys and Land Information (SLIS) and the well known project HOPE, initiated to build a professional Cadastral Information System for the office of the Chief Surveyor General. Various projects with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) were also undertaken over the last 10 years including Project Miracle, which involved the capturing of 8 million land parcels in the span of 8 months and also a number of international projects mostly for the UK.

Several years ago Herbst started to groom a management team capable of taking over the reins of Computer Foundation, a task he feels he has now admirably fulfilled. "My management style is one of empowerment and my passion is working with people. To empower people you must give them responsibility and so, after a number of years of pro-active delegation at Computer Foundation, I feel ready for a fresh challenge. I am leaving behind an extremely competent and able management team in whom I have every confidence," he added. According to Herbst, Computer Foundation is still very close to his heart and, because of the synergy between Computer Foundation and some of the companies in M Squared, he envisages future cooperation between them.

According to Herbst, investment organisation M Squared presents just the right sort of challenge. The M Squared Group currently comprises a number of innovative, technology driven and synergistic organisations including Venn Diagnostics, Mintnet, mapActive, MunSys Technologies and its Australian counterpart, Open Spatial Technologies.

Venn Diagnostics provides a countrywide utility analysis service involving the cost control and auditing of utility bills to ensure clients are charged at the best possible cost per unit. Internet specialists, Mintnet, develop strategies to meet the specific Internet needs of clients utilising the locally developed '4D' system - a four-stage approach for the discovery, design, development and deployment of Internet technology.

On the commercial side of geographic information and spatial data, mapActive provides practical, versatile mapping and geographical analysis solutions to any kind of business enterprise. With a specific focus on local government, MunSys Technologies offers complete enterprise geospatial solutions, planning, consulting and development services to this market. Based on proven Oracle and AutoDesk technologies, MunSys is a fully open, database-driven, geospatial solution tailored specifically to meet growing municipal needs. Already attracting considerable attention locally, MunSys has recently opened offices in Australia under the name Open Spatial Technologies, and is looking at investments in Europe for the near future.

Considering his background, Wilhelm Herbst is understandably still very interested in the future direction of GIS. "The market has changed dramatically. Five years ago the GIS market was primarily concerned with, and totally focused on, the capture of spatial data, the main reason being that there were no data available. Because data capture is time-consuming and expensive, this in turn limited the GIS market to government departments and parastatals that could afford to embark on massive data-capturing projects."

At this point the GIS market was fragmented with many products on the market and very little synergy between them. Says Herbst, "Typically the users of GIS were also fragmented with little inter-communication. For example, the Departments of Agriculture, Water Affairs and Surveys and Mapping and so on would all capture the same data, to different standards and without any inter-departmental communication. The result of this was multiple sets of often incomplete, incompatible data."

A change of focus in the market occurred with the need to capture countrywide data to create a voters' roll for South Africa's second general election. "A result of this was that users started to talk to each other and a scenario in which different organisations started using each others data began to develop."

Today the emphasis has moved away from pure data capture applications towards solutions customised for a particular environment, and this, according to Herbst, is where MunSys comes into its own. "MunSys is a complete, easy to use set of tools covering all the geospatial needs of local government. It talks the same language as they do and it follows the way local government has worked all along. This is the future of GIS - providing workable solutions and not just generic packages."

M Squared Investments

(011) 884 8955

wherbst@msq.co.za