Ron Lake, president, Galdos Systems Inc.

Do you see any silver linings in the geotechnology industry’s economics that make you feel optimistic about the near future?

For the general economy, I think we’re not out of the woods. I believe we’re in the middle of a significant shift in the balance of power from west to east. Although I don’t think this will end with yet another “decline of the west,” I believe the new equilibrium is yet some distance off.

For conventional applications of geotechnology, this will continue to be bad news. But geotechnology can contribute to cost reduction and our ability to meet commitments to the “green agenda.” As a result, I believe there are opportunities in the AEC industry as well as in the energy sector. Some of this opportunity may be in the west, but I expect to see the greatest growth in the near term in China, India and the Middle East.

Will open-source software be the future of our industry? 

In spite of the rise of open source, one would have to say that ESRI has a lock on the GIS industry per se, and the remaining vendors (Autodesk, Bentley, etc.) have a lock on the “design” component of geotechnology. I think open source will continue to expand and be a major driver for innovation.

But I don’t expect open source, especially if interpreted as free software, to have a major overall impact. Open source will continue to play a major role in fundamental IT frameworks on which geotechnology rests, and there will be few, if any, closed-source vendors that don’t make major use of such software in their applications.

What role will cloud computing have in our industry?

I expect cloud computing to play an increasing role in the industry. It enables small companies and governments to scale up systems and datasets in a manner that would be impossible by purchasing or leasing hardware. As already demonstrated by Microsoft and Google, cloud computing enables huge resources to be applied to common tasks such as data serving for visualization.

We can anticipate cloud computing to be applied to many processing domains as well, especially with respect to remotely sensed imagery. As we move to a more real-time GeoWeb, integrating numerous real-time measurements and simulation models, much larger computing resources will be required. Cloud computing offers the possibility of meeting these requirements.

Cloud computing, however, doesn’t solve the problem of data integration. That will remain the fundamental challenge for the broader application of geotechnology for at least the next decade.

Will mobile devices (smartphones) become the face of the geotechnology industry?

The mobile devices we see today are pale imitations of what we’ll see very shortly, and the distinction between mobile devices and desktops will largely disappear. I think we can anticipate ultra-thin devices with significant viewing surface area (e.g., folding screen surfaces), thus largely eliminating the limitations of current devices.

We also can anticipate much tighter integration of the mobile device with the “persistent” environment (perhaps maintained in the cloud), so you can access it at all times from your device. The desktop as separate from the mobile device will disappear altogether in less than five years, and the current transition phase of limited-view screen applications will disappear with it. The use of devices with multi-touch and multi-modal interaction capability (e.g., GPS, orientation, various sensor modalities) are here to stay,