Google Earth Enterprise Now Available on GitHub as Open Source
Rosslyn, VA (PRWEB) March 29, 2017 -- Google Earth Enterprise (GEE), the server-based and offline version of Google Earth used extensively by major business enterprises as well as National Security, Humanitarian, Education, and Intelligence agencies around the world, is comprehensively released today on GitHub as Open Source software. For years, GEE has been the most popular enterprise platform for 3D visualization and private mapping, amassing a user base well into the millions. The milestone announcement that this previously licensed software package would be opened to the world was made on January 30, 2017 and Thermopylae Sciences & Technology (TST) has been working hand-in-hand with Google since then to prepare the code.
In an interesting twist, March 29, 2017 is the exact date of TST’s 10th anniversary.
“Ten years to the day from TST’s founding on March 29th, 2007, we are proud to announce the successful transfer of GEE from its home within Google as a proprietary codebase, to an Open Source project on GitHub,” said TST CEO, AJ Clark.
With experience in GEE dating back to the company’s inception as well as a large, exceptionally trained and ready software engineering staff dedicated to Google Earth Enterprise Open Source Software (GEE OSS), TST is well positioned to assist its customers with continued support and growth with the capability. Working with other spatially inclined engineers and Google partners around the world, TST has committed to providing support, management, and improvements to the open source codebase into the future.
“Both our Government and Private Sector customer bases have interesting technology challenges that necessitate the use of a platform like GEE OSS for bandwidth-constrained environments,” commented Andres Terrazas, TST CTO. “We have a long history of solving complex geospatial problem sets and GEE OSS gives us a platform that not only gives us tools to do so, but also with a user experience that is well loved within the user community.”
Now that GEE OSS is released, TST has begun execution of a long term roadmap of enhancements, gathered from years of feature requests from customers. Community contributions to the code base will be reviewed by a Project Governance Board to ensure their security and fit within the existing stack, with broad geospatial community support expected within the first year of release. TST has also planned for ongoing and enhanced support of all components, including GEE Server, GEE Fusion, and GEE Portable, ensuring the viability of this capability for the global user community. With Google’s original announcement on January 30, 2017 and commitment to continue to update and make the Enterprise Client available, there is a bright future ahead for the product suite as it evolves in new directions.
More information on TST’s involvement in the GEE Open Source initiative can be found at http://geo.t-sciences.com. Google’s original announcement can be read by visiting https://maps-apis.googleblog.com/2017/01/open-sourcing-google-earth-enterprise.html.
About Thermopylae
Thermopylae Sciences & Technology is one of Google’s top globally performing Google Cloud Premier Partners, with a decade of close collaboration with Google sales and engineering, offering strong technical solutions for implementing Google Earth and Google Maps API. We are a multiple Google award-winning firm including the NORTHAM Business Impact Award for Maps 2015, Global Partner of the Year for Maps 2013, North American Deployment Partner of the Year for Maps 2013, and North American Innovation Partner of the Year for Maps 2012. TST is a longtime supporter of the Defense and Intelligence community as well as our private sector customer base that ranges from startups to Fortune 50 companies. TST is a Veteran Owned Business.
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Harris Eisenberg, Thermopylae Sciences & Technology, http://geo.t-sciences.com, +1 (703) 436-8562, [email protected]
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