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Web GIS allows us to take our systems of record - our traditional server and desktop technologies - and integrate them, bringing them together into a system of systems.

GIS is being influenced by and integrating with all kinds of new innovations such as faster computing, big data, the cloud, smart devices, and distributed processing.

The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information.

ArcGIS is an integrated Web GIS that is supported by services. These are abstracted in a geoinformation model that's managed by the portal, and then accessible by a number of apps, which are the growing part of this system.

There is the GIS world that is largely managing authoritative data sources, supporting geocentric workflows like fixing roads, making cities more livable through better planning, environmental management, forest management, drilling in the right location for oil, managing assets and utilities.

Organizations want small changes in functionality on a more regular basis. An organization like Flickr deploys a new version of its software every half hour. This is a cycle that feeds on itself.

With the never-ending stream of new social technologies, apps and platforms rolling out every day, its easy to get lost in the minutiae of social media. Yet for there to be effective change, especially within large, top-down, hierarchical institutions, a company must have an over-arching understanding of the new role it has to play.

Organizations spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars installing and implementing huge servers, new Web sites and applications. They have to continue to do that, but they also have to clean up the mess of the '90s.

As the web becomes more and more of a part of our every day lives, it would be a horrible tragedy if it was locked up inside of companies and proprietary software.

It seems like the web, particularly software as a service, provides ample opportunities for you to flourish economically, completely aligned with the broader open source community.