[By Sean Manget , Alaska Journal of Commerce]
An Anchorage company that sells stereoscopic mapmaking software and equipment recently acquired contracts with entities in Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh, said general manager Jeffrey Yates.
DAT/EM Systems International sells software and hardware that allows clients to create three-dimensional maps. In its latest iteration, its software, Summit Evolution, allows a user to don 3D glasses and trace a map for use in AutoCAD and other engineering programs.
DAT/EM currently services roughly 500 clients in more than 70 countries, he said. Uses for the mapping range from tasks like construction surveying to damage assessment in the wake of natural disasters.
In Ethiopia, the country’s Ministry of Urban Development paid roughly $771,000 for licenses so it could gather an inventory of 150 villages, Yates said.
“They’re just kind of getting an inventory of what’s there, what the infrastructure is like, probably so they can go out and tax people,” he said.
The Saudi government and several branches of the military have taken a contract for roughly $508,000.
DAT/EM maintains nearly 100 licenses to various entities throughout Saudi Arabia, Yates said, including oil industry interests like state-owned petroleum company Saudi Aramco, as well as educational ones at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The university designed a curriculum around DAT/EM software, Yates said.
A $200,000 contract in Bangladesh rounds out the company’s recent international contracts. Yates said the contract is for a survey similar to the one in Ethiopia.
The company saw its genesis in 1987, though Yates said the idea came about two years prior.
The company was spun off into a subsidiary by a map-making firm now called AeroMetric Inc. AeroMetric buys licenses from DAT/EM but maintains separate branding for the company, Yates said.
The first machine Yates used to make maps while working for AeroMetric looks like something out of a Jules Verne story: as the user peers through a microscope-like viewer, wheels and metallic parts grind and turn as the user traces a map composited from two negative aerial photographs.
This $80,000 to $100,000 monstrosity, which takes up the entirety of a desk, eventually gave way to machines that could be loaded with software developed in-house and sold to other firms.
This became DAT/EM’s business model.
In 2001, the company replaced the bulky machinery it had been selling with software that could run on Windows-based PCs.
Since 1998, that software has gone through three versions. The latest version, Summit Evolution, retails for $20,000, Yates said.
In addition to clients in Africa and the Middle East, the company also services clients in Asia, with entities in countries like India, Thailand and Japan licensing the software.
When asked if their Japanese clients had been affected by the earthquake, triggering a tsunami that destroyed areas along the country’s coastal regions, Yates pointed to a picture a client sent him from Sendai, Japan.
It shows an office virtually destroyed by the quake, with wrecked computer equipment strewn about the room. A DAT/EM mousepad is visible amid the damage.
“We have a very large client in Japan, and lots of small ones, too,” Yates said. “They were affected directly by the quake, and I imagine they are doing a lot of the quake assessment as well using our software.”
Marketing their services often requires a personal touch, Yates said, and DAT/EM personnel travel the world to meet with potential clients. A world map displayed in their headquarters is littered with thumbtacks demonstrating the places they’ve visited.
Utilizing the unique image of Alaska helps the company to stand out from the rest of the pack, Yates said. Mouse pads the company provides with its hardware feature Alaska scenery.
“We capitalize on the mystique of Alaska,” he said.
Despite its relatively small size – the company employs 12 people and recently grossed between $3 million and $4 million – DAT/EM has become a significant exporter in Alaska, Yates said.
In fact, in 1993, the company was named “exporter of the year” by then-Gov. Walter Hickel.
Last month, DAT/EM Systems International issued its 2,000th license, Yates said.
Now, roughly 60 percent of the company’s services are exported to other countries, with the remaining 40 percent going to domestic clients, Yates said.
Alaska is not a huge market for DAT/EM products, he said, but some local companies use them.
Anchorage Sand and Gravel contracts with AeroMetric to take aerial surveys of its rock quarries at the end of each construction season to determine overall inventory, said Stanton Moll, the company’s business development manager.
“They measure the volume of those piles,” Moll said. “And then that’s their inventory for tax purposes and for sales purposes.”
But while the company’s expanding clientele encompasses a variety of countries in sometimes volatile regions of the world, Yates said he still considers the ethics of dealing with a given country before signing the contract.
Yates singled out Libya as a country he wouldn’t do business with now, and some countries, like North Korea, are absolutely blacklisted, he said.
Sean Manget can be reached at sean.manget@alaskajournal.com.
See the original story here: http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/041411/loc_lftms.shtml
