WhittmanHart Consulting (WHC) is a management and technology consulting services firm that delivers solutions with a unique blend of industry relevance, business process innovation and technology expertise. The company is recognized today as an industry leading provider of consulting services in the Business Intelligence (BI) arena, particularly focused on the Hyperion software technology acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2007. WhittmanHart, Inc. will retain and continue to operate WhittmanHart Interactive, its leading interactive agency, in a standalone capacity.
"The Commission found that the merged company would be unlikely to pursue these strategies because its ability to restrict access to digital maps ... would be limited by the presence of an upstream competitor, Navteq," it said.
The new company "would have no incentive to restrict access to digital maps because the sales of digital maps lost by Tele Atlas would not be compensated by additional sales of personal navigation devices," it said.
The European Commission will clear the 2.9 billion-euro ($4.5 billion) purchase on May 14, a week before the regulator's May 21 deadline to rule on the transaction, said the people, who requested anonymity because the decision isn't public.
Thomas and his partners already have put $400,000 of their own money into the two-year-old business. They're looking for another $700,000 to take it to the next level, Thomas said.
WineMap.org has the potential to revolutionize the $3 billion annual winegrape market, he said. It allows growers to show their vineyard locations online and offer their grapes for sale.
Growers will pay WineMap $1,200 per year, less than half of what it would cost to sell through a broker, Thomas said.
So far, about 1,500 growers are using the Web service, representing 3,000 vineyards in California and Oregon.
While this is surely a growing piece of the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle that is Enterprise Content Management, there's not necessarily a practical business application for the geo-web in your enterprise. Don't be too quick to be dazzled by the demo; after all, do you really need your CMS to tell you where the local pizza joints are? MetaCarta claims that 74% of documents on the Internet are "geo-relevant," or plottable on a map. Is the same true of the content in your enterprise? Will plotting your documents geographically add value to the experience, or enable you to manage or find content more effectively? Perhaps, but as with any software that may look cool on the surface, be sure to assess your real business needs before you invest.