Challenge
Geoscape Australia provides geospatial location data, which is used by a growing range of consumer applications, business processes and government services.
Until recently, Geoscape Australia’s business model was to license large data sets to a small number of customers through an established reseller network. Then, the industry was disrupted by new players like Google. Geoscape now has a large number of customers demanding small subsets of data on an incremental pricing model.
In the rapidly changing geospatial industry, the market is growing but margins are shrinking. Geoscape needed to transform into a developer-centric, retail API business.
Geoscape’s first generation of APIs were repackaged versions of their existing products. The organisation approached GoSource for advice on how to make these existing apps more appealing.
Approach
GoSource proposed an experimental suite of developer-friendly representational state transfer (REST) APIs on a scalable cloud infrastructure as well as a new way of working, which was to provide an initial useful app and use it to learn about the needs of the target market.
A multidisciplinary integrated team drawn from both GoSource and Geoscape took endto-end responsibility for API features. Using best-practice continuous integration, automation and testing, they released enhancements and new features rapidly.
Solution
The new API provides pay-as-you-go access to data is a simple system that does not require deep geospatial knowledge to use effectively.
By frequently releasing new features in response to evidence of need, the team developed user relationships based on responsiveness. This result is high quality APIs that fit market demand with organic growth in line with Geoscape’s targets.
Geoscape Australia’s APIs now support the mainstreaming of location data. They are the country’s go-to resource for accessing this kind of data.
- Client
- Geoscape Australia
- Timeframe
- Three months, with ongoing involvement
- Scope
- Architecture, first release of the technical solution, product team hire and ongoing product management support
- Summary
- GoSource enabled Geoscape Australia’s business transformation through redesigning its APIs
Benefits
- Rapid appeal Within less than two months, the prototype had seen more traffic than the legacy product had achieved in 18 months.
- Evolving the business GoSource’s service mix has helped Geoscape build its core capabilities, to ensure a sustainable future.
Just as the scope of the API has now expanded beyond the initial data set, the entire organisation is now repositioning into multidisciplinary product teams.