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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.

A number of organizations are already using Web GIS to create shared information and facilitate collaboration, and it is literally changing the way organizations operate.

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 started on mainframe computers; we could get one map every five to 10 hours, and if we made a mistake, it could take longer. In the early '90s, when people started buying PCs, we migrated to desktop software.

I have high hopes that GIS will become increasingly relevant for landscape architects as we make the tools easier to use for the design process of just inventory and mapping.

GIS is the only technology that actually integrates many different subjects using geography as its common framework.

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.

The world is being re-shaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is dramatically transforming the way we live and work.

Everything is going to be connected to cloud and data... All of this will be mediated by software.

In this new world, with smartphones and tablets and cloud computing, things are moving around fast.