Point of View — location technology
For product managers and business executives.
Building location technology is not just hard, its expensive and requires creativity and very long term, very ambitious vision. A very few technology domains come any close to that. Hence, when developing and choosing the technology stack that fuels location dependent applications, there is a need to evaluate how our approaches would matter.
Today, we might know a few geo tech, mapping organizations doing this right and at the scale that is ubiquitous, but that does not mean there are not other players and options. Big and small, everyone has a role to play in channelizing the long term roadmap where technology is headed.
- For product managers — The traditional products, even recently SAAS, PAAS products have a model to follow, you can predict the reach and impact, most of these softwares are building over existing needs in different paradigm. I would say you are mostly not creating a new need. However, this does not apply to mapping of how location information is used, you have the responsibility to create and communicate the need. You have the responsibility to educate your customers. Your day to day decisions are value driven with the ability to innovate as well as be able to not go bankrupt in doing so. One can say GAAS (geo as a service) has a place of its own.
- For business people — Both sales and customers, understand the value the tech brings and efforts that goes into it, understand the underlying impact to the bottom line (think transportation, logistics, operations) and be able to dig down to make sure the product and techlogy provider has sustainable model to provide long term (if not lifelong) service or product. Be creative on the asks and proposals on what “next thing” you can build together. I would argue each deal is opening a new door for you, as we saw before, these teams are constantly innovating.
I have been developing, product managing and designing map products from Bing Maps, to Google MyMaps to Google Earth to now HDMap for AV. Not a single day goes by not appreciating how location intelligence helps human as we have evolved today. Also not a single time I have underestimated the efforts and futuristic thinking of the pioneers in the field. Its a puzzle — You start with a piece and add more and more only to realize one day you have mapped the craters on the Mars
At least thats what Google could do !
Data is not enough
If you are selling or buying maps, its not a data you are paying for — here are the most expensive parts that would for the most part drive the cost in some percentage :
Base map — Ground truth data aquisition and processing, somettimes think regulations, data validation (could be manual work, could be automated with the help of tools and algorithms), accuracy and freshness of data and enough compute and storage to serve the same.
Advanced representation — Also called the layers. These are sohphesticated algorithms build to serve the location based queries via API, events( or agreegation of events to make a meaning out of them) — this is symantics, the object representation, the state representaion with different actors making real time decisions in the system. This is where you put your machine learning & AI prowess, to fuel meaningful transactions and learn from the failed ones. The critical live data regarding location is made available with sensors, multifold signals and chips. Data is agreegated from different systems and whole workflow often needs to be built on the top of serious compute infrastructure. Scale may or may not matter here, this could be fragmented, lots of small players in this part of the stack. If there is anything you are building that can be called brain of the system, this is it. Hence, to use and propose the layers, consider the speed of execution and one can imagine the need for creative problem solving.
Serving location data
Now that you have all the location data and the infrastructure to serve the complicated queries, how will users use it? is it csv file, a doc? a Json response? the nature of data is such that you will almost always comeup with your own format for not just storing but also for serving this data and the complicated relationships of the real world. You will need licenses and innovations of all sorts to serve in various platforms, applications and scenarios. Obviously what you control in the server farm, you cant, when its in user’s hands — so its better to pre-process and efficiently represent the system and often make it more platform agnostic. There are very less propritary client softwares and databases in this space, for a reason. So map data serving has evolved into some serious area of constant development. These could be edge servers, offline maps, online API queries or locally building the globe from the predownloaded tiles and serve it locally.
Accuracy and freshness
Lets say you are tracking fleet operations, will you not want the information to be absolutely accurate all the time ? What other such applications do you use today that rely on extreme accuracy and most upto date information? — If I had to answer, I would say, Finance (including any forms of currency and echosystem), trades of all sorts, defense, public safety — those are some obvious ones, there is also robotics and medicine in my list. These are arguably some high value, high cost, most intruiguing, complex forms of applications and sophestication that human has ever developed that also need to keep the state of the system (can have pure data, alogorithms etc) most upto date. Now compare where geospatial data and applications stand ? they aught to fall in these categories.
Peace of mind,safety
Hence, next time your user successfully reaches to their appointment on time on correct place, next time they get their package on time on a correct address AND yet another time they make that deal to ship tons of material to totally remote part of the world, give them timely, accurate, dependable data with most efficient way possible.
One would be appreciative and fascinated on how you are making world navigate further.
conclusions:
- Product managers — see the future, see big bets, creativity, imagine the big picture, be passionate about it. Go to the lenghts of educating the team about the vision. Prioritize important bets, location tech will always be one of the important ones, believe, get funded, get the brightest minds on your team and challenge the status quo… one may say we have what we need… dont stop the quest for mapping and serving.
- Business people — Dont hesitate to invest, this is one area where investment will always pay off, just need to find right teams to invest in, right product to stand by and right solution that will be futuristic and will pay off or save in multifolds, only because of your right steps to sell/buy/aquire/hire right location technology.
