Wayland, MA, October 15, 2007 – The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) today announced that Northrop Grumman Corporation has upgraded its OGC membership from Principal Member to Strategic Member. Strategic Membership is the highest level of membership in OGC.
Northrop Grumman's membership is through Northrop Grumman's Information Technology sector. Northrop Grumman joined OGC in 1996 and has been either a Strategic or Principal Member of the Consortium since 2001. As a premier integrator for the geoprocessing and imagery communities and now as a Strategic Member in OGC, Northrop Grumman plays a leading role in the development and implementation of OGC standards for geospatial interoperability.
Northrop Grumman's continuing commitment to OGC reflects the company's understanding of their diverse clients' needs for interoperable geoprocessing. Northrop Grumman is able to help companies and agencies address increasingly complex problems that involve sharing spatial data and processing resources. Decision support for critical infrastructure protection and emergency management, for example, may require some users to remotely access multiple sophisticated image processing servers while others rely on real-time updates to simple maps on their Web-connected PDAs, or alerts from sensor arrays. These flows of data and instructions typically cross the boundaries of multiple proprietary software platforms, so interoperability interfaces are essential.
"Northrop Grumman's continued membership and active involvement in OGC is part of the company's commitment to taking a leadership role in the effective and interoperable use of geospatial information and technology in meeting the mission and business needs of government at all levels as well as the commercial and other non-government sectors," said John Olesak, vice president, Geospatial Intelligence, for Northrop Grumman.
Under the terms of Northrop Grumman's Strategic Membership, the company will provide the Consortium with significant resources to advance OGC's Compliance Testing, Outreach and Interoperability Programs.
David Schell, Chairman and CEO of OGC, said, "We are very fortunate to have Northrop Grumman as a Strategic Member. Northrop Grumman brings both corporate commitment and leadership to help the widespread implementation and use of standards-based geospatial capabilities in spatial data infrastructures both domestically and around the world."
Northrop Grumman is one of the world's premier providers of information management and systems engineering solutions for government and industry.
The OGC® is an international industry consortium of more than 350 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS® Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.”