Boundless Desktop 1.1 Release and Partnership with Mapbox

Alison Drain, product manager at Boundless, spoke with GISCafe Voice about the new product release of Boundless Desktop 1.1 and strategic partnership with Mapbox announced in July. Mapbox is a location data and mapping data platform for developers.

Through this partnership, Boundless customers can now access high-quality Mapbox basemaps within the Boundless Connect ecosystem.

According to company materials, today, Boundless Desktop users can easily access this content through the Boundless Connect plugin. Mapbox content is also accessible through Boundless Suite and Exchange subscriptions. These basemaps include:
• Mapbox Streets: A comprehensive, general-purpose basemap used for styling transit networks
• Mapbox Outdoors: A basemap with curated tilesets and specialized styling tailored for adventurous use cases such as hiking or biking
• Mapbox Light & Dark: A subtle, full-featured basemap that provides geographic context while highlighting data
• Mapbox Satellite: A full global basemap, perfect as a blank canvas or overlay
• Mapbox Satellite Streets: Combines Mapbox Satellite with vector data from Mapbox Streets, providing a comprehensive set of road, label and POI information; bringing greater clarity and context to the crisp detail in high-resolution satellite imagery
• Additional premium services for routing, geocoding and more will be available in the near future.

“This announcement (Mapbox partnership) signifies the massive growth and capabilities of Boundless Connect and accelerates the movement towards open GIS software and developer tools by expanding access to important content like Mapbox’s datasets and gorgeous maps,” said Andy Dearing, CEO of Boundless. “Partnering with Mapbox has been phenomenal and will only add value to our users. Making this data and content easily accessible through the Boundless ecosystem allows for significant productivity gains and unparalleled flexibility to our customers.”

Boundless Desktop is a cross-platform desktop GIS built upon proven open source software. Its ecosystem consists of over 600 plugins that make working with geospatial data simpler than ever before.
The release of Boundless Desktop 1.1 demonstrates company’s ongoing commitment to creating the world’s premier open GIS ecosystem. Boundless aims to continually provide customers with improvements and updates that make open GIS a viable and preferred alternative to proprietary GIS software.

Key features of Boundless Desktop 1.1 include:
• Access to premium basemap content from Mapbox made possible through a new partnership with Mapbox.
• Improved support for terrain analysis through a new toolbar that exposes common analysis techniques in a single location.
• Increased support for imagery with a new image discovery plugin. This feature enables users to conduct a quick search through image libraries and discover image scenes based on location, cloud cover, acquisition date and more. Planet’s Open California dataset will be provided as a default library, made possible through a recent partnership with Planet.
Drain had this to say about the product release of Boundless Desktop 1.1 and partnership with Mapbox:

GISCafe Voice: How would users access Mapbox base maps prior to the release of Boundless Desktop 1.1?

Previously, users couldn’t load Mapbox basemaps directly into QGIS. Boundless Desktop 1.1 makes it possible to view gorgeous Mapbox basemaps within our desktop GIS — so your data and tools are easily accessible from a single application.

GISCafe Voice: What does increased support for PKI Authentication mean to users?

This has important implications for a certain customer segment (DOD/IC) but not for most general users. We’ve added a plugin that makes it easier to work with PKI-protected services within QGIS, cutting down on the steps needed to work with these certificates.

GISCafe Voice: What ways do users search for imagery with the new release?

Desktop 1.1 introduces a new Image Discovery plugin, which makes it easy to search for imagery from any image catalog endpoint (local or remote) based on AOI, date acquired, off-nadir angle, cloud cover percentage, and sensor type. You can easily add your imagery provider to access image catalogs directly from QGIS.

GISCafe Voice: What abilities does the Terrain Analysis provide?

Desktop 1.1 introduces a new Terrain Analysis toolbar, which moves commonly used terrain analysis tools (hill shade, slope, viewshed, etc.) onto a single toolbar for easy access. This makes it easier to find and use tools needed for terrain analytics that were otherwise disparate and hard to find.

GISCafe Voice: What are the Premium features for the enterprise tier?

Premium subscriptions for the enterprise tier include direct access to Boundless technical support staff, our body of learning materials, and our Web App Builder for easily creating and compiling web applications from the desktop without writing any code.

We sometimes refer to content from our partners (Mapbox, Planet) as premium content. Boundless has partnered with several basemap providers, and we now include easy access basemaps via the Connect plugin. Simply keyword search for your basemap in the Connect plugin, and add it to your display to quickly get started. Desktop 1.1 loads the Mapbox Streets layer into your QGIS project by default upon startup, which makes it easy to get started with your GIS project without needing to track down data first.

Boundless Desktop 1.1 is available now. The software is free to download, and premium features are available through a subscription to Boundless Connect starting at just $4.99/month.

Tags: ArcGIS, Autodesk, cloud, crowdsourcing, ESRI, geospatial, GIS, Google, Google Maps, imagery, Infrastructure, location, mapping, maps

Categories: 3D Cities, airports, analytics, geospatial, GIS, image-delivery software, mapping, Open Source, OpenGeo, remote sensing, sensors

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 3rd, 2017 at 9:03 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.