Bentley and ESRI Announce AEC GIS Interoperability Initiative.

Business Editors

SAN ANTONIO, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 3, 2003

Bentley Systems, Incorporated and ESRI today announced their AEC GIS Interoperability Initiative, an unprecedented strategic technology initiative that will result in direct and intelligent integration between desktop and server based products from the two companies.

Bentley, with its solutions for Architecture/ Engineering/ Construction (AEC) professionals, and ESRI, with its solutions for GIS professionals, both provide spatially oriented graphical applications. These applications are often used within organizations served by both Bentley and ESRI. Such organizations include municipalities, transportation agencies, national government agencies, utilities, communication providers, and others.

"Bringing information together is at the very heart of GIS," says David Maguire, director of products, ESRI. "And so this important joint interoperability initiative will be well received by our respective users."

While Bentley and ESRI applications may create and maintain data in a common coordinate space, they are designed for unique purposes and therefore used by individuals with distinct organizational functions. ESRI's GIS users typically perform enterprise data management, decision support, cartography, planning, and analysis functions. Bentley's AEC users design, engineer, build, and operate roadways, railways, buildings, plants, networks and other constructed assets.

GIS users require a broad view of spatial information, the ability to work with large areas, and powerful analytical functions. Engineers create and work from sets of detailed drawings and models, with spatial information, and require a rich set of 2D and 3D geometry-based engineering and design functions. The needs of the GIS user are best met by a continuous multi-user database. The engineer's requirements continue to be best met by a model and drawing paradigm.