Microsoft Corp has joined Open GIS Consortium Inc – that’s Geographic Information Systems Consortium – as a principal member, which no doubt shows how nice Redmond can be when a group sets its standards around pet Microsoft technologies. Open GIS, based in Wayland, Massachusetts, recently sent out its first request for proposal for simple geographic features with interfaces that will let competing geographic applications access each other’s data using Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding and Common Object Model technologies. Intergraph Corp championed OLE/COM at the Consortium as head of the team that put together a draft specification in response to the request for proposal. As a principal member of Open GIS, Microsoft gets a seat on the 85- member consortium’s management committee. Internally, Microsoft has dedicated around 40 people to its geographic information systems efforts.
