What are the future career opportunities for individuals interested in geospatial technology? 

These days, geospatial technology no longer is only the domain of universities and a handful of technical industries—it’s everywhere. Offerings from major technology companies such as Google and Microsoft have pushed geospatial intelligence to the forefront of public consciousness and into the hands of more people. As a result, consumers increasingly expect location-based content and a geospatial component in the services they use.

At the same time, public and private organizations are beginning to look at geospatial technology in the context of their existing business ideas and ways of doing things, examining its potential for enabling them to do those same things better, faster and with fewer resources, ergo, more profitably. This heightened consumer demand and emergence of more business-streamlining initiatives are expanding the need for software developers, database managers, and subject-matter experts who combine in-depth geospatial knowledge with a thorough understanding of the workings of other industries to implement solutions that leverage geospatial technology to improve how we live and work.

Currently, this fusion of geospatial efforts with other industries primarily is evident in industries that are in any way involved in “green” projects as well as public-safety and disaster-response organizations. Incorporation of geospatial technology into their current products, services and systems is really the only way for them to achieve their standards of excellence. As time goes on, we can expect to see geotechnology implemented not only in these critical types of projects, but also in products that save people time and money, and enhance recreation. The demand for employees with these broader knowledge bases will only grow larger.

How do we make geospatial Web capabilities easier to create, deploy and modify? 

The key to making geospatial Web capabilities easier to create, deploy and modify really boils down to your choice of tools. It’s best to consider tools that are specifically designed to simplify development. For example, ensuring compatibility with multiple browsers, including those used on mobile devices, can be a significant task. By selecting tools that bring you closer to browser independence, you’re saving yourself some time and effort. It’s also best to consider tools that are widely used, so there are plenty of practitioners to choose from within the development talent pool.

A new advanced geospatial Web toolkit built on HTML5/CSS3 and Open Web Standards really meets the needs of customers looking for something off-the-shelf as well as developers looking to build more tightly integrated custom solutions. It’s rare to see industries converge on technologies so universally, but when you hear about both Microsoft (Silverlight) and Adobe (Flash/Flex) building products in direct competition with their own proprietary technologies, you need to take notice. The ability to build clients easily for all platforms at once, including mobile, is transformational for the industry.

Will cloud-computing architectures become the norm for most geotechnology applications, even those that require high-end capabilities?

When the geospatial industry first gained an interest in cloud computing, companies took some time to analyze how to leverage the cloud and re-factor existing software. After that initial lag, the technology developed at an extremely fast pace.

Currently, the technology is there, but organizations are trying to figure out how to budget for it, since it’s different than the traditional site-based model. Right now, we’re probably in the later stages of the early adopter phase of the technology, but when organizations finally become comfortable with cloud technology from a business perspective, I expect it will become the standard for the processing, delivery and hosting of geospatial data.