Message from the public sector team

Welcome to the first 2006 edition of the MetaCarta newsletter. This newsletter will be sent out each quarter to provide you a quick look at what’s new, how customers use MetaCarta products, details about the underlying technology, and where to find us at various upcoming events. We hope you find something of interest in the newsletter and appreciate feedback on what else you would like to see in future editions.

MetaCarta in the spotlight

News

2005 was a successful year for MetaCarta. We added Shell, BP, and Amerada Hess as customers with deployments across the globe. We’re looking forward to greater success in 2006 – it’s off to a great start… Saudi Aramco and Statoil are conducting pilot deployments of MetaCarta geOdrive.

To better meet the needs of customers, we are expanding our Energy team to include another Senior Account Manager and Senior Field Engineer in the Houston office. In addition, our 2006 product roadmap includes many of the features you have been asking for – read details in the “From the product front” section below.

Events

Energy
2006 ESRI Petroleum User Group Conference, Booth #312
Location:	JW Marriott Hotel; Houston, TX
Date:	April 03, 2006 - April 05, 2006
The ESRI Petroleum User Group (PUG) conference is a forum for petroleum and pipeline professionals on what's new and next in geographic information system (GIS) technology.

AAPG 2006 Annual Convention, Booth #1660
Location:	George R. Brown Convention Center; Houston, TX
Date:	April 09, 2006 - April 12, 2006
The theme of the meeting, "Perfecting the Search" reflects efforts to improve abilities to find and produce hydrocarbons commercially as we strive to become better scientists and explorers.
Corporate
2006 ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference, Booth #205
Location:	Wyndham Hotel & Convention Center; Palm Springs, CA
Date:	March 18, 2006 - March 21, 2006
Location Intelligence Conference, Booth #10
Location:	The Renaissance Parc 55, San Francisco, CA
Date:	April 03, 2006 - April 05, 2006

Press - Energy

** Article excerpt ** Oil IT Journal “Shell’s smart decisions leverage MetaCarta”

Shell is ‘finding new plays’ with its IM architecture spanning structured data, documents and GIS. Speaking at IQPC’s 5th Annual Oil and Gas Exchange in London last month, Global Explorationist Adam Dodson unveiled Shell’s smart decision tools, for providing end users with ‘what you want, when you want it, the way you want it!’

… The cherry on the IM cake is MetaCarta’s text-based geographical indexing - this recognizes spatial location information in natural language and tags such information with geographical location. Roll in Shell’s SDE-based spatial data stores (OITJ N° 10 Vol. 3) and you have the complete picture. It seems to be working for Shell - as Dodson said, ‘Seriously, we are finding new plays with this stuff’…

Speaking engagements

Gerry Hey of British Petroleum Venue: 2006 ESRI Petroleum User Group Conference
Location:	J.W. Marriott Hotel ,Houston, TX
Date:	April 3, 2006 - April 5, 2006

Betsy Palkowsky, Product Manager, MetaCarta Venue: 10th Annual Petroleum Networks Education Conference (PNEC)
Location:	J.W. Marriott Hotel, Houston, TX
Date:	April 19, 2006 - April 21, 2006

From the product front

On January 30, MetaCarta released geOdrive version 3.1. This release included several significant upgrades, including a feature known as ‘aggregated search’. This feature allows end-users to execute queries that extend beyond a single appliance. For example, an organization may have several geOdrive appliances: one in Houston, one in London, and one in Jakarta. With aggregated search, executing a query on "deepwater exploration" can retrieve results from one, two, or all three appliances.

In addition, version 3.1 significantly improved document ingestion performance. Several small enhancements added up to a big boost in performance -- conservatively estimated at 50%!

In late March, we expect to release version 3.5 which will include stored queries and notification, improved visualization tools, region search, and an enhanced ESRI ArcMap extension.

How is it used?

New customers often ask how existing customers use MetaCarta geOdrive. Here are just a few questions existing customers use MetaCarta geOdrive to answer:

1. What exploration and production information do we have on and around this well in the Gulf of Mexico?

2. Using information from the MMS and our internal network and data stores, which leases are expiring in Green Canyon over the next year?

3. What technical reports and geological studies do we have covering our concessions in offshore Vietnam, Angola, and the North Sea?

4. How can we access our internal network documents, our Documentum/Livelink content, and external technical collections through a single search interface?

Check back!

During the coming weeks, be sure to check the MetaCarta Web site for more information on the upcoming geOdrive 3.5 release. This will include stored queries and notification, improved visualization tools, region search, and an enhanced ESRI ArcMap extension.

Thank you!

- The MetaCarta Public Sector team