Market overview
The market is continuing to grow quickly around the world but more importantly, it is changing. We see a continuing trend towards the fusion of CAD and GIS technologies and an intensifying requirement to integrate GIS data with mainstream enterprise applications and data stores. We also see a continued focus on organisation-wide productivity versus desktop productivity and this is why Bentley has continued to develop its federated data management strategy through the Geospatial Server with enterprise connectors.

Bentley also observes the need to create data/designs once and then, publish them many times to different constituencies/users. So, we are seeing an increase in the adoption of web publishing technology for Intranets and public websites and the continued development of mobile platforms for field technicians to leverage GIS and engineering information. We believe that the geospatial customer base worldwide is increasingly demanding the kind of integrated GIS/engineering solutions that Bentley offers. This year, Bentley was named as the #2 software vendor worldwide in the GIS/Geospatial market by Daratech, placed second only to ESRI, and we believe that this confirms our prominent position in the market worldwide.

We have also seen many new developments such as the increasing use of Google Earth backdrops for GIS and spatial data (and Bentley has been at the forefront of integration with Google Earth), increasing interest in deploying platforms that are de facto standards (such as Oracle Spatial) and greater leverage of interoperability technologies (such as OGC standards like WMS and WFS).

Asian scenario
India and China are very fast growing markets for GIS and infrastructure engineering technology and there is no technology gap between more mature markets and India and China. Bentley has had strong success in both of these markets.

In India, our largest geospatial customer is the Survey of India (SoI). SoI has deployed MicroStation V8 XM and Bentley Descartes which has enabled it to offer downloadable PDF maps economically targeted at a broad audience.Also in India, one of our water utility customers, Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP), won a BE Award of Excellence at BE Conference-2006 in the Geospatial Public Works category for its use of Bentley software in modelling the interconnection of 14 networks in the greater Mumbai area as part of a disaster recovery project. This project saved nearly US$2m and saved a year in design time compared to previous projects where Bentley software was not used.

In China and Asia generally, we are seeing the deployment of 3D city models and huge investments in new cadastral platforms to support fast-changing land ownership and population patterns. Generally, Bentley sees vast opportunities in these geographies as Asian countries continue to invest in twenty-first century infrastructures.