Smallworld is the brand name of a portfolio of GIS software provided by GE Digital, a division of

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...

. The software was originally created by the Smallworld company founded in Cambridge, England, in 1989 by Dick Newell and others. Smallworld grew to become the global market leader for GIS in 2010 focused on utilities and communications and remains strong in this sector today.according to a 2010 Daratech report Smallworld was acquired by GE Energy in September 2000. Smallworld technology supports focused application products for

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...

and

utility As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosophe ...

industries.

Smallworld GIS Solution Portfolio

The Smallworld solutions are based upon Smallworld's

Geographic Information System A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a ...

(GIS) and primarily provide industry-focused products for: * Electric Transmission and Distribution Utilities: Smallworld Electric Office, GIS Adapter * Telecommunications: Smallworld Physical Network Inventory * Gas Distribution and Transmission Utilities: Smallworld Gas Distribution Office, Smallworld Global Transmission Office, MAOP * Water and Wastewater Utilities: Smallworld Water Office The Smallworld GIS is also used by a number of customers outside of these industries to provide the basis for solutions within rail and road transportation. In addition, GE provides a number of cross-industry and integration solutions including: * GeoSpatial Analysis for geospatial business intelligence with the ability to visualise data from a wide range of spatial and non-spatial data sources such as Esri Shape files, AutoCAD DWG, Microsoft Excel, etc. * Smallworld GeoSpatial Server for service-based integration and web mapping * Mobile Enterprise for field enablement of workflows *

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

integration enables access to Google Maps and

Street View Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expa ...

directly within the Smallworld applications. * Integration of Safe’s FME product allowing import and export between other GIS such as Esri ArcGIS, Hexagon Intergraph, Pitney Bowes MapInfo, etc. * Smallworld Business Integrator enables integration with ERP systems such as SAP and IBM Maximo. * Smallworld GIS Adapter–provides a tightly integrated mechanism for sharing the as-built network with operational systems.

Technology

GE Digital’s Smallworld GIS platform utilises a number of technologies: * The 64bit

Java Virtual Machine A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describe ...

which allows supports development in both Java and Magik (an object-oriented programming language that supports

multiple inheritance Multiple inheritance is a feature of some object-oriented computer programming languages in which an object or class can inherit features from more than one parent object or parent class. It is distinct from single inheritance, where an object or ...

, polymorphism, multi-threading and is dynamically typed). * A database technology called Version Managed Data Store (VMDS) that has been designed and optimized for storing and analyzing complex spatial and topological data and supports alternative versions of the data during long-transactions to manage the progression of assets through their lifecycle (plan, design, build, operate, maintain). * A highly-secure and reliable server layer providing web-based access and integration based upon containers and orchestrated by

Kubernetes Kubernetes (, commonly stylized as K8s) is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Google originally designed Kubernetes, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation now maintains ...

supports streamlining and automating enterprise deployments. * The solution can be operated on-premise or deployed into the major public cloud providers such as OCI,

Amazon AWS Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide di ...

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via around the world-distributed data centers. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a ...

and Google Cloud.

References

{{reflist Companies based in Cambridge GIS software companies GIS software History of computing in the United Kingdom Science and technology in Cambridgeshire