MapInfo Corp. (Booth 513), a global provider of location intelligence solutions, recently announced the availability of MapInfo Professional version 8.0. A user-friendly, comprehensive location intelligence package, MapInfo Professional enables communications carriers to visualize easily the relationships between data and geography to drive more insightful decisions. This in turn leads to increased revenue, lower costs, enhanced efficiencies and improved service.

More carriers of all sizes are realizing the benefits of integrating location data and analysis into work processes and daily decisions. MapInfo Professional allows quick determination of optimized relationships between the location of assets, customers and competitors. Based on this analysis, users can make better decisions about new products and services, network buildout, customer demographics and revenue potential. In addition to finding customers, Location Intelligence empowers companies to answer critical questions such as where to dispatch service crews and what is the fastest route; where assets or networks should be located; and what markets are vulnerable to competition.

Location Intelligence enables organizations to reach their performance targets and provides a critical addition to a companys operational processes, says Mark Smith, CEO and senior vice president of research at Ventana Research. Organizations today that fail to embrace location as a business context and technology will fall behind competitors and not be effective or efficient in their daily operations.

With new features such as faster editing tools, new data creation and analytical capabilities, enhanced data access and work area enhancements, MapInfo Professional v8.0 provides increased flexibility and productivity.

Already a standard tool for the communications industry, this newest version offers more ease of use for those of all experience levels from power users to those new to mapping. In addition, new enhancements such as multiple user support, free data such as U.S. Urban Areas and additional demographics provide improved automation and time-saving shortcuts.

MapInfo Professional v8.0 provides increased support for industry standards including the Open GeoSpatial Consortium for Web Feature Service and Enhanced Web Mapping Service. With a superior level of integration and interoperability, MapInfo Professional v8.0 customers are able to incorporate data from different sources

including direct support of industry standard databases from IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Oracle, as well as third-party data and proprietary company data, to view it on a single map for enhanced analysis. This improved interoperability offers greater collaboration with colleagues, partners and customers.

The added support of advanced Oracle capabilities such as Oracle Database 10g Workspace Manager allows joint MapInfo Professional and Oracle customers to work with server side versioned data for optimal data sharing and business process enablement. The ability to easily maintain different versions of the same database table data on the server better meets joint customers needs to edit the same data in a distributed environment.

MapInfo is a pioneer in bringing Location Intelligence to leading companies and government agencies worldwide, and MapInfo Professional remains a key component of our product offerings, says Michael Hickey, COO, MapInfo. While we have augmented and enhanced the functionality and analysis capabilities of the software, we continue to provide the same level of ease of use that MapInfo is known for in the industry. MapInfo Professional v8.0 is a powerful tool for companies seeking to gain competitive advantage, allowing them to tap into their existing databases and discover the power of location intelligence.