Track: Telecommunications
Enterprise GIS Deployment on the BellSouth Telecommunications Intranet
Pat GeerStephen P. Czajkowski
The success of an Intranet GIS can be measured by its ability to solve real business needs for companies whose geography spans multiple cities, states, or countries. BellSouth Telecommunication's land base GIS manages corporate data for a nine-state region in the southeastern United States. With a variety of clients from engineers to planners, the GIS needs to be powerful, flexible, and accessible over the corporate Intranet. To provide these clients with timely and accurate information we also need efficient data entry, conversion, report generation, and mapping abilities. To meet these requirements, the management of our land base is being converted from a proprietary system to Esri's Spatial Database Engine using Oracle Server. Using this platform we can optimize performance, maintain data integrity, and manage security of our spatial and ancillary data sets. The design allows for data entry, conversion, and editing using customized ArcInfo ODE tools. Most importantly, we can distribute our spatial and tabular data throughout our network with customized and "off-the-shelf" software products. To reduce development time we have leveraged a number of Esri software. An Esri-built Java applet is being used to distribute corporate boundary and street data. BellSouth distributes a custom ArcExplorer project to drafting clerks as a quality control tool for verifying corporate boundary data. MapObjects IMS will be used to distribute digital raster graphics and digital orthophoto quarter quadrangles. Desktop mapping is being accomplished with ArcView GIS. Using this variety of GIS tools to deploy over our Intranet allows users to send a plot from Miami, Florida to Louisville, Kentucky, or query, edit, and map a building database in Jacksonville, Florida, from Birmingham, Alabama. The BellSouth GIS is being developed as a resource to serve not only its employees but outside contractors, suppliers, and other telecommunication companies. The ultimate goal is to provide the best and most timely service to our customers, the telecommunications consumer.
Pat Geer
BellSouth Telecommunications
16GG1 BST, 301 W. Bay St.
Jacksonville, FL 32202
USA
Telephone:
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E-mail: Pat.Geer@bridge.bellsouth.com