BA3: High Performance GIS Data Visualization on Any Platform

Bruce Shankle, Founder
Enterprises face many challenges with regards to mapping and GIS; first, a large enterprise can have dozens or hundreds of sources of map data scattered throughout the organization, siloed in different departments and different systems, with no way for people to understand what is available and how to share it. The second is a hodgepodge of tools and systems that different departments use, often poorly, to display mapping assets. Third is a fragmentation of software developer skills across those disparate tool sets, rather than a single consistent tool set that allows easier training, cross-development and sharing of both code and data. The fourth one is the lack of beauty. The maps in many enterprise applications look terrible, and this affects consumer impressions and branding. Finally, enterprises often find they are trapped by the offerings they use for map rendering. They may have no control over base layers, no ability to put multiple layers over the map, no ability to mix and match data sources and no way to customize. Leveraging new age GIS tools to address all these issues is BA3—a software development company that provides complete mapping solutions.

Headquartered in Raleigh, NC, BA3 offers GIS products like Altus Mapping Engine, Altus Server and Altus Mapshop. Altus Mapping Engine provides enterprise clients a single, integrated, high-performance, highreliability mapping engine that works on every platform, including iOS, Android, Windows 8 desktop, Windows Phone, OSX desktop and Web. It uses an identical code base and compatible APIs in all cases, so if developers learn one pattern, they can use Altus ubiquitously across all platforms. The Altus Server provides enterprises a method to merge and process their mapping data within their existing server pipelines for display in the Altus Mapping Engine. Altus MapShop is a stand-alone product that helps developers and cartographers to select vector sources and style them for display in the Altus Mapping Engine. Vector maps have advantages that include compact storage compared to raster tiles, dynamic styling on device and high performance rendering.

The key differentiating factor for BA3 is the performance and capabilities of its tools.


BA3 helps enterprises render GIS data with high-performance on any platform, giving the client complete control over the data and look of the map


The company’s tools can work with any GIS data sources (including custom sources) and most importantly have wide multi-platform capabilities. “A unique feature of our company is the ability to come into an enterprise as an A Team, to completely solve an enterprise’s mapping and GIS problems. If there is an impossible mapping problem in any organization, BA3 can probably solve it,” says Marshall Brain, CEO, BA3.

Out of many success stories BA3 has under their belt, the company’s association with a Fortune 500 company stands apart. The client had a dozen departments utilizing mapping data from many diverse sources—both internal and external. No one in the organization had visibility on all the sources, and a majority of the teams were also not aware of what the other teams had, as they were not sharing data, code or talent. In numerous cases, fees were being paid several times for similar data, and none of the tools was compatible across teams. BA3 was able to come in and rationalize the mapping space, provide a single tool set, bring all the data to one place and process it, so that everyone in the organization has access.

The BA3 set of products is under incessant, energetic development and enhancement. “We are implementing many more capabilities, so that clients can conceptualize or create anything that they can imagine on their maps. BA3 is also working to bring our superior mapping products to places like in-dash systems, enterprise systems, more industry verticals, and consumer products,” concludes Brain.

Company
BA3

Headquarters
Raleigh, NC

Management
Bruce Shankle, Founder and Marshall Brain, CEO

Description
A software development company that gives enterprise clients complete control over their mapping assets and rendering