Google-maps like product for internal business use?

[JForce]

I work for a large retailer, and therefore we have hundreds of branches around the place. My team are responsible for all our internal support systems, and we've been looking for a "proof of concept" type exercise for a while - something we could do that would be fun to design and implement, cheap, but deliver some value, with an additional "wow" factor.

We had a large restructure a few months ago, as you do, and one of the interesting exercises underway at the moment as a fun thing to do is we have a map of the country, and as we visit a store, either for personal or business reasons, we're putting pins in - sort of a "see how long it takes us to visit every store" type thing.

Of course my team were immediately all like "why aren't we just using Google maps" etc, which got us thinking.

What we'd like is a map layer that we can have/use internally, that we can plug all our stores into, and then feed "data" onto it. This would be for internal use - imagine being able to browse to a store, see it's sales data, physical data about the store, contact details etc, but from a map view.

Anyway, I've had a look at the Google maps enterprise stuff but it isn't cheap, so does anyone know of an equivalent? Anyone got any experience with anything similar?

[Aea]

You could always use D3.js, I used it for some stats porn, pretty simple to use too.

http://mbostock.github.com/d3/talk/2...horopleth.html
http://mbostock.github.com/d3/talk/2...ports-all.html

Yes, you can do exactly what you're asking to do with it. No, it doesn't have a built-in "drop a pin" functionality, you need to create it yourself, but the difficult problems are solved for you. Yes it has other countries.

[Lana Torrin]

Can't you just use the Google maps stuff? I thought the enterprise stuff included a licence so you could resell the product. If you aren't going to be releasing it to the public then no problem..

[firefoxx80]

OpenStreetMap.

Basiclaly they allow you to download their entire dataset (map) and host it yourself. You can customise the map's appearance, etc. I've seen it used where people have optimised it for HGV driving; so the map ignores all minor roads, etc. (it hides them in the final render). You need your own servers to do this, but it sounds like you can do this; you can also download partial datasets (eg. if you only wanted to map North America).

[Loganbacca]

It is possible to just host a kml file on a web server (with the appropriate mime types set) and then just point Google Earth or Google Maps to it with a network link kml: http://www.gelib.com/google-earth-network-links.htm
I'm just not sure whether you are legally allowed to do it that way as a business. Isn't the enterprise licencing just if you want to use Google's server side software internally?

Also Google Earth can access network links on an internal web server, but Google Maps can't. So you may have to host it in a publicly accessible place if you wanted to access it with Google Maps using the network link method.

[Aea]

ITT nobody understands google maps enterprise licensing.

[Derpy Torrin]

ITT nobody understands google maps enterprise licensing.

Explain. And if you say free for internal use I'm going to hunt you down and bite your dick off.

[Hel OWeen]

I've never used any map system, but read your thread title yesterday and today I stumbled over this piece on ./

http://www.infoworld.com/print/198012

Maybe there's some helpfull info in there.

[Aea]

ITT nobody understands google maps enterprise licensing.

Explain. And if you say free for internal use I'm going to hunt you down and bite your dick off.

I never used it internally, but my last company paid a shitload in fees for public use. After a certain size you pay for having it on your site per request. I'd believe that all internal access would be charged per request and the minimums are high. Assuming he's asking to not use google the research has already been done.

[Frug]

Mapquest has an open API which afaik you can use internally for free. It's a bit more limited than google maps in some ways, but the actual street details are better than google maps in a few areas. Like it maps out my apartment and city block in far greater detail than google maps.

Overlays on the API are easy to use and pretty much the same as google maps. If you want to just stick some html in the overlay it's not difficult at all.

Read over their terms of use for the open maps though. i couldn't see any limitations prohibiting internal use but I'm not responsible if you dont' read it!

[Frug]

Mapquest has an open API which afaik you can use internally for free. It's a bit more limited than google maps in some ways, but the actual street details are better than google maps in a few areas. Like it maps out my apartment and city block in far greater detail than google maps.

Overlays on the API are easy to use and pretty much the same as google maps. If you want to just stick some html in the overlay it's not difficult at all.

Read over their terms of use for the open maps though. i couldn't see any limitations prohibiting internal use but I'm not responsible if you dont' read it!