Latitude's Plans for Geocortex Fleet Tracker

Hi Everyone,

Further to my last couple (http://support.geocortex.com/geocortex-solutions-for-arcgis-server-current-status-and-the-road-ahead) Geocortex Technology: Current Status & The Road Ahead webinars, this post provides additional details on the future of Geocortex Fleet Tracker.

Primarily in light of Esri’s upcoming release of ArcGIS GeoEvent Server in early 2013, Latitude Geographics is in the process of transitioning Geocortex Fleet Tracker from General Availability to Mature Support (please refer to our (https://support.geocortex.com/Data/Sites/1/documents/product-life-cycle-11-2012.pdf) Product Life Cycle  document for more information on these phases).  

First, some history. Based on demand from a handful of existing customers, Geocortex Fleet Tracker was first introduced to help our customers view real time and near real-time assets using their existing investment in ArcGIS Server infrastructure. Built during what we (correctly) interpreted as being the late Web ADF era (~2009), we decided to build Geocortex Fleet Tracker via a REST approach, delivered a custom Silverlight viewer. This development occurred in early days of the REST era, and well before we introduced the Geocortex Viewer for Silverlight. The result was vastly preferable to building the product in Web ADF, but it also means that Geocortex Fleet Tracker is independent of Geocortex Essentials and the central principles of our Spatial Application Infrastructure approach.

For these reasons, we’d been planning to migrate the product this fall from a standalone product offering into an optional extension for Geocortex Essentials. Then, in early summer 2012, Esri described to us the scope of their ArcGIS GeoEvent Server project. As more information was provided in subsequent months as development progressed, it became increasingly clear that ArcGIS GeoEvent Server is a well-engineered core platform that’ll go beyond the scope of what Geocortex Fleet Tracker ever sought to offer in the AVL space. A few months ago, we discontinued marketing and licensing the product in light of what’s upcoming.

We believe it’s in everyone’s best long-term interests for us to maintain a strategy that complements core Esri technology instead of competing with it. And so, all plans to develop a next-generation version of the basic AVL capabilities we’ve created previously are on hold. 

Our plan is to wait until ArcGIS GeoEvent Server is released and organizations start working with it to determine if there are compelling opportunities for us to add value to ArcGIS GeoEvent Server via an optional extension that’s integrated with Geocortex Essentials. For existing licensees, we will continue to support your implementations; if your organization would benefit from the source code for Geocortex Fleet Tracker, let’s have a conversation.

Feel free to contact me directly at smj@latitudegeo.com if you have any questions or feedback about this announcement.

All the best, 

Steven Myhill-Jones