Vexcel Corp., a Microsoft company, today announced the availability of version 2.0 of the Microsoft Virtual Earth Server, the on-premises intranet mapping platform based on Microsoft Bing Maps for Enterprise. Virtual Earth Server is designed for those customers who are interested in using Bing Maps, for example defense/intelligence customers or first responders, but have concerns about a dependency upon, or connection to, the internet in order to access this service. Either their application is too critical to rely on internet connectivity, they don’t have an internet connection, their internet connection isn’t sufficiently reliable or fast, or they have other security concerns. The Virtual Earth Server allows these customers to take advantage of the Bing Maps platform without the need to have an internet connection.
Version 2.0 provides a number of significant product enhancements to support the needs of enterprise customers including: a new Silverlight-based map control; 3rd party data integration capabilities for GeoTIFF and KML that take advantage of SQLServer 2008’s spatial extensions; a template to connect to and ingest content from OGC-compliant WMS imagery servers; and a forward geocoding capability.
Coinciding with the 2.0 release is the debut of the Virtual Earth Server on Microsoft Volume Licensing. Customers can now easily license the Virtual Earth Server through their Microsoft Enterprise Agreements and take advantage of significant price discounts.