From GISystems to GIServices: Spatial Computing on the Internet Marketplace

Question: Why do people buy a GIS? Answer: Because their neighbor has one. Richard Newell of Smallworld Systems told this joke during his keynote speech at the 1997 Symposium on Spatial Databases—and he did not only refer to Smallworld customers. The truth behind his joke is that GIS are often greatly underutilized. Many customers use only a small fraction of the functionalities offered by their GIS. Some of them are aware of that: they simply do not care about the remaining features. Others are not: they may thus miss functionalities that are actually there and use complicated ways to reimplement them with the features they know. Yet other users may not use their GIS at all: they bought it because they thought it may help them with their problems but then found out that it does not. Some customers may not even have bothered to look: they bought the GIS andleft it in the package.