Intergraph Corporation, locally represented by Intergraph Systems Southern Africa, is now offering the new GeoMedia 4.0 product suite, delivering improved performance and increased productivity to GIS professionals with expanded data access and integration tools, improved plotting workflow featuring the new GeoMedia SmartPlot tools and more than 75 customer-driven enhancements.

The GeoMedia product suite includes GeoMedia, GeoMedia Professional, GeoMedia Web Map, and GeoMedia Web Enterprise.

As the first open geospatial solution on the Microsoft Windows NT platform, GeoMedia broke down the barriers of proprietary GIS systems to deliver an open, easy-to-use and cost-effective platform for enterprise wide GIS. GeoMedia is continuing in its quest to remain a leader in the GIS marketplace with fine data access and integration capabilities, ease-of-use and productivity and support for open standards.

With this release, Intergraph continues its commitment to deliver open and productive solutions for GIS and IT professionals who deploy GIS and share data across the enterprise. The GeoMedia 4.0 product suite offers significant new features and enhancements including:

* Expanded data server support - now includes support for the industry-leading Oracle 8i Spatial Object Model data server, support for Microsoft SQL Server data server and other industry data servers to provide a robust GIS data integration for users

* Advanced plotting capabilities - provides an improved, integrated plotting workflow with new GeoMedia SmartPlot tools that provide a layout window for map layout and composition and extensive graphics tools for customising map designs - all in a single-step process

* Customer-driven enhancements - delivers increased productivity with new data capture tools that provide CAD-like functions, visual authoring and application generation tools for the Web and dynamic segmentation analysis capabilities; improved scalability with an enhanced dynamic display cache and distributed computing via hardware clustering support

* Commitment to open standards - provides support for new emerging industry standards including XML/GML (extensible markup language/geographic markup language) for Internet GIS and WML (wireless markup language) for wireless GIS

Available for shipments to customers in June 2000, the GeoMedia 4.0 product suite easily fits into the IT enterprise workflow and addresses the GIS requirements for government, transportation, private industry, education and other organisations.

Pieter van Jaarsveld, Business Unit Manager for Geo Engineering and Mapping at Intergraph Systems, comments, "This announcement reaffirms Intergraph's commitment to make customers’ GIS return on investment the highest in the industry. As early as 1995, Intergraph shared its vision to bring GIS out of its techno-closet and into the IT mainstream. GeoMedia technology was designed and built on this basic premise and is realising that vision today with products that serve the entire spectrum of geospatial users."

With the GeoMedia 4.0 product suite we have reached a major milestone in performance, functionality and robustness. This is a mature, proven technology that provides Intergraph's southern African customers unprecedented data integration and fusion capabilities for sharing and communicating information across the enterprise. The success and continuous enhancement of GeoMedia is made possible with the input we encourage and receive from our valued GeoMedia user community and partners. By continuing to push the envelopes of open standards, data integration and productivity we fully expect our customers' GIS ROI to improve even more dramatically."

GeoMedia integrates an organisation's geospatial data from multiple vendor formats and maintains geospatial data sources using advanced industry platforms. Building on the successful Intergraph and Oracle alliance, GeoMedia 4.0 supports the industry-leading Oracle 8i Spatial Object Model data server. Intergraph has supported Oracle Spatial since GeoMedia was introduced. Many government agencies and corporations in South Africa and worldwide have adopted this combination as their standard for mapping and GIS.

Intergraph also offers support for Microsoft SQL Server, ODBC Tabular, Smallworld and Genasys data servers - making the GeoMedia environment a robust GIS data integrator. Adding these data servers expands the sharing of data across multiple disciplines without translation and reduces the time it takes to access data and analyse spatial information. GeoMedia already provides full data server support for ArcInfo, ArcView, AutoCAD, MGE FRAMME, MapInfo, MicroStation CAD, SelectCAD, Oracle 8 Spatial, and Access.

The GeoMedia 4.0 product suite makes sophisticated GIS techniques productive and easy to use. With the GeoMedia 4.0 release, plotting is integrated into GeoMedia as a single-step process so users do not have to leave the GeoMedia environment to plot. Key features built into the user interface are the new GeoMedia SmartPlot layout window for map layout and composition; enhanced controls for establishing WYSIWYG graphics; redlining tools; layout templates and extensive symbols; and a workflow interface to Interplot Organizer and Digital Print Room for storing, printing and distributing completed maps.

The GeoMedia 4.0 product suite is Windows 2000 compliant and fully embodies the look-and-feel and operating conventions of Windows applications. This benefits users whether they are trained in the GIS discipline or only occasionally view GIS data. GeoMedia's focus on operational efficiency and simplicity shortens learning curves and improves productivity across the enterprise.

GeoMedia supports tools based on industry standards including Windows, Component Object Model (COM), ActiveX, Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), and standard databases to enable unprecedented GIS connectivity across the global enterprise. Intergraph continues its commitment to open GIS with its support of two new emerging industry standards: XML/GML for Internet GIS and WML for wireless GIS.

Supporting XML/GML broadens data access and integration capabilities by bringing together data providers and clients anywhere on the Internet. In a desktop or thin client environment, users have the ability to access geospatial data on the Internet for distributed GIS analysis. WML enables access to GIS data and geoprocessing over wireless devices connected to application servers powered by Intergraph's GeoMedia Web-based solutions. This means users can access geospatial data to view a map of the city they are visiting, for example, and perform network analysis such as finding the quickest route to a destination with nothing more than a cellphone or other WAP (wireless application protocol) capable devices. These industry standards will be supported in the GeoMedia product suite the second half of 2000.

"With its new GeoMedia 4.0 product suite, Intergraph has expanded universal data access and integration for its customers and has embraced open standards to help users leverage the Internet and wireless GIS. These core enhancements position Intergraph to further extend its commanding presence in key GIS markets worldwide," says Bruce Jenkins, Vice President, Daratech.

"We continue to be impressed with Intergraph's clear strategy for uniting GIS and IT technologies. The GeoMedia 4.0 products support that strategy. This is good news for organisations that need to easily access and integrate data as well as view and analyse data. We are equally impressed with GeoMedia's open architecture and Web-enabled tools to facilitate the broad use of geospatial technology both inside and outside the enterprise," says Dave Sonnen, Senior Consultant for Spatial Information Management, International Data Corporation.

Duane Guidry, Director of Sales and Marketing, Applied Technological Services, comments, "We are excited about Intergraph's new GeoMedia 4.0 product suite especially the expanded data server support. Being able to simultaneously connect to disparate data warehouses and to additional databases is extremely beneficial to our efforts and our customer's success. We appreciate Intergraph's commitment to delivering new and innovative GIS technologies while maintaining their vision for an open, nonproprietary GIS environment."

"GeoMedia 4.0 adds a number of important new capabilities to the already powerful GeoMedia environment. Plotting is a major enhancement with many easy-to-use layout and map design features. Its addition means substantially enhanced productivity. GeoMedia 1.0 was the first Windows-based system to adopt the object-relational data structure as its native geospatial format and it was the first to directly access the Oracle relational spatial cartridge data format in read and write mode. With its expanded data server support, GeoMedia 4.0 is the only Windows-based GIS system providing the full range of individual, mid-range and enterprise class read-write, object-relational geo-spatial warehouses on the market," explains Fred Limp, Director and Professor, Centre for Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Arkansas.

Intergraph Systems

(011) 313 1222

pvjaarsveld@intergraph.co.za

www.intergraph.com