Thursday 11 January 2018

RIP: Autodesk Infrastructure Map Server (2006-2018)

Prepare the burial plot in the Autodesk Graveyard, the news has come out which I had long suspected, but is now official: Autodesk has ceased development of Infrastructure Map Server, the commercial counterpart of MapGuide Open Source.

However unlike Autodesk's other ill-fated products, Infrastructure Map Server has the unique lifeline of being able to live on through the MapGuide Open Source project because AIMS is built on top of MapGuide Open Source. Just because AIMS has died does not mean the same fate has to apply to MapGuide Open Source. This project has been in existence for 12 years and counting. The future of the MapGuide Open Source project can be as bright as the community allows for it.

If you are an AIMS customer wondering what your options are in light of this announcement, you should subscribe to the mapguide-users mailing list (if you haven't already) and share your thoughts, questions and concerns.

If you provide support/consulting/development for MapGuide/AIMS you should also subscribe and advertise your services.

I'll make some announcements on the mailing lists about future plans for MapGuide Open Source.

Rest in peace Autodesk Infrastructure Map Server, formerly known as MapGuide Enterprise (2006 - 2018)


7 comments:

Ivan Milicevic said...

Jeez man... And have you read about ESRI offer?!?

Another consideration is this offer from Esri. With the recently announced collaboration between Autodesk and Esir, Esri is making a special offer available to AIMS customers: Between January 7, 2018 through December 31, 2018, each seat of AIMS, regardless of contract plan (maintenance or subscription), will be eligible to receive a seat of Esri ArcGIS Enterprise Standard plus one additional license of the Esri ArcGIS Desktop Standard. This is a free one-time offer for the license and the license will fall under Esri’s standard maintenance program the following year.

What is the future of Autocad Map?! Are they going to invest some resources in MGOS?! It's been a while since they actively worked on it, mostly you and few others contributed there...

Thanks, Ivan.

Jackie Ng said...

Yes, here's a product we have that has been trying to compete against ESRI for so long. Now let's kill it and tell you all to move to the compet-I mean ... "new collaborative partner". If I were a customer, that would feel like a spit in the face.

Anyways, I've long been disassociated with anything Autodesk and their products. So I only know as much as you do.

Ivan Milicevic said...

Giving up from web based GIS platform is super super strange. Either, they're starting a brand new product or ESRI is about to acquire ADSK :))

Giovanni Perego, detto Gimmi said...

Looking at dimensions, it is Easy Autodesk acquire ESRI :-)

Ivan Milicevic said...

Holy crap, I just saw the figures?!? Who would say...

נמרוד כנען said...

Well written Ng .No Need 2 panic. MGOS is good product that serves thousands of users with open source orientation. We may have reached the point where the open-source community has the very basics of continuing the project on its own, somewhat differently than it has been until now. The King Has died - Long Live The new king.

Simon said...

Esri fan here - I see the partnership as pretty exciting?
Being able to access Revit data (BIM models in particular) natively in Esri will be great.

I also see Esri has put a lot of effort into their AutoCAD free plugin to make it easier for those users to work against services from ArcGIS Enterprise.

And ArcGIS Enterprise has a lot of capability that was not in AIMS - vector tiles, advanced cartography, 3d visualisation, streaming analytics, distributed analytics.

I like the fact that the bridge between the two companies is now an easier one.