MapInfo Professional is used in virtually every industry and in public sector organizations at the federal

MapInfo Professional is used in virtually every industry and in public sector organizations at the federal, state and local level, to analyze patterns and trends and make better-informed decisions. It's ease of use combined with its powerful display features have consistently ranked MapInfo Pro at the top in desk-top mapping. MapInfo is used by social scientists, transportation analysts, facility planners, health professionals, disaster planners, and crime analysts. It's use in the telecom industry is exploding. It's highly likely MapInfo will be one of your tools in the near future. The powerful new features in MapInfo Professional 5.5, including enhanced continuous thematic shading, powerful business graphing and charting functionality, and support for Oracle8i can benefit your IT decision making through the power you gain from data visualization.

MapInfo's continued emphasis on integrating with Internet and Java technology has resulted in a giant step toward making spatial analysis a mainstream technology for enterprise applications. MapInfo continues to integrate with leading technologies. Version 5.5 shipped with MrSID compressed image support. Support for the open standard Enhanced Compressed Wavelet (ECW) imagery format is being added next. (ECW is a groundbreaking technology that allows GB and even TB images to be quickly compressed and used.) And with MapInfo's support for the new OGDI plug-in from GEOMATICS, departments can now make even wider use of MapInfo Pro; end-users are freed from executing the often complex technical tasks involved in data integration. Different GIS's within a given company can have access to a unitary database while users are free to work with their applications of choice while maintaining a thread via the MapInfo Professional plug-in to any required geodata.

Andrew Dressel, co-founder of MapInfo Corporation and product director of MapInfo Professional, will present features of MapInfo Professional Version 5.5 and discuss their application in a variety of applications. Mr. Dressel will also be available for a question/answer session at the close of CCSP.

BIO --

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has a tradition of producing technological innovators. In the early 1980s, Andrew Dressel and three other RPI students developed a business plan for a desktop mapping software package as a class project. The notion of a desktop GIS at a time when the costs of GIS systems and hardware were priced in the hundreds of thousands of dollars was truly a paradigm shift. MapInfo Corporation was founded in 1986 with the help of the business director of one of the major programs in Rensselaer's Center for Industrial Innovation. Headquartered in Troy, New York, MapInfo is now a global IT company with products and solutions available in 20 languages and a network of strategic partners and distribution channels in 58 countries.

MapInfo Corporation has maintained close ties with RPI. Last year it donated $1.3 million in software and data to RPI, MapInfo staff regularly lecture at RPI and RPI students are regularly interned at MapInfo Corp. An Illinois graduate working with the CEO at MapInfo sponsored establishing a significant vendor relationship with UIUC last year -- MapInfo Corporation made a substantial donation of software and data to UIUC departments, faculty, students and affiliated organizations. Andrew Dressel's visit to UIUC and CCSP in particular builds on their interest in establishing a cooperative vendor relationship with UIUC.

In 1992 Andrew Dressel took a leave of absence from MapInfo Corporation in Troy, New York. After convincing former Soviet authorities he was not a spy, Andrew worked through the Kiev Polytechnic Institute in assisting Ukrainian entrepreneurs establish their own IT ventures. Urban legend has it he joined the Foreign Legion during this time overseas; in fact, his work was sponsored by RPI. Andrew returned to MapInfo Corporation in 1997 and is currently Product Manager for its flagship product -- MapInfo Professional. Andrew maintains an open dialogue with MapInfo users and is responsive to their requests to integrate new technologies.