MapPoint and Virtual Earth

Microsoft MapPoint provides a series of products that deliver mapping and location based services, allowing companies to build dynamic geospatial applications.  For instance, a company can use the MapPoint suite of products to:

• Allow customers to search for nearby store locations, display the nearby locations on a map, and provide customers with the ability to generate point to point driving directions to a specific store location from their starting address.
• Make business location decisions and reports, such as how far away are my customers from stores?  Where should I open a new location?  Where are my top selling stores?  Where are my most valued customers? 
• Visually relate custom data onto geo-scorched maps and map based pie and bar charts.
• Track and manage your fleet operations and sales team.
• Integrate within the Mobile 5 platform to provide both internal and external customers the ability to find your locations at any time through WiFi triangulation and GPS coordinates.
• Display satellite and Bird's Eye images of their locations to customers, providing an enhanced visualization up to 25 yards away.

To accommodate the above map based applications, Microsoft has three MapPoint product offerings.

• Virtual Earth – The Virtual Earth Platform is Microsoft's next-generation mapping service.  Virtual Earth combines powerful satellite and bird’s eye imagery with location & search functionality and enables businesses to deliver a breakthrough customer experience and grow their business. By enabling customers to visualize, locate and search for business assets, the Virtual Earth Platform enables businesses to increase customer satisfaction, improve business results and grow business.
• MapPoint Web Service – A leader in Web based mapping solutions, the MapPoint Web Service provides a programmable Web service.  Microsoft hosts the Web service, providing the service in an "on-demand" environment, enabling enterprises and independent software developers to integrate location-based services such as maps, driving directions and proximity searches into software applications and business processes. By using the MapPoint Web Service, companies can improve business results through better discoverability of store locations and business assets.
• MapPoint CD Product – MapPoint 2006, the latest version of the MapPoint CD-based product, provides powerful business mapping software that combines advanced data mapping, information analysis, and communication tools.  As a standalone application, MapPoint 2006 can easily integrate with Microsoft Office, providing integration with Outlook, Visio, Excel, and Word.  Designed for everyday business use, MapPoint 2006 allows users to easily bring clarity to tabular data, track location and receive voice-prompted directions, initiate mapping and location directly from Outlook, and quickly identify business trends on a map, with either the user’s own data or up-to-date, detailed demographic information.

Infusion Development has emerged as one of Microsoft's primary partners for MapPoint development, hosting and support.  Not only does Infusion host and develop applications for many Fortune 500 customers, we are Microsoft’s provider for Tier 1 support for the MapPoint Web Service.  In addition, Infusion developed, hosts and maintains the MapPoint Multi-platform Assistance Center a website for MapPoint developers using non-.NET based languages.