Today’s world is a wired one, and the Internet connects many people and devices for communication, whether for business, leisure, or private conversations ranging from PCs to tablets and laptops to smart phones and more. Many of these devices communicate by means of orbiting satellites, and since most such items are mobile, marketing companies and other professionals are interested to track the movement of these items and the people holding them, and this information, often known as geospatial mapping, spatial analysis, or demographic reporting, can be very useful. Geospatial data analysis services is a recent but robust industry today, and the location intelligence gathered from geospatial data analysis services can be used in all sorts of ways, from commerce to marketing to safety and even search and rescue. When geospatial data analysis services takes off, the Internet of Things becomes a major part of both business and everyday life.

The Basics

What is the Internet of Things? This is a term describing how many electronic devices are used to connect to the Internet, ranging from smart phones to laptops to tablets, and geospatial data analysis services will track how these items move, and consider the implications of all this data that orbiting satellites gather for them. This makes for a big industry that has a lot of uses. There are always at least 24 GPS satellites working in the planet’s orbit, and often, 30 of them or so may be at work, gathering data the entire time. The research company Garter has said that 4.4 million “big data” jobs will open up within the next two years, and they expect that only about one third of them will even be filled, meaning that people interested in technology and data tracking may find this to be a very lucrative career path in the coming years. Similarly, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that between 2012 and 2022, jobs that require familiarity with GIS and location intelligence may have steady growth in job creation, such as geographers, cartographers, and mapping technicians. In fact, the business of geospatial data analysis services such as the Geospatial industry generated an impressive $73 billion in the year 2011, and it generated nearly $1.6 trillion for the rest of the American economy. Where the future is concerned, MarketsandMarkets released a report showing that the geospatial analytics market may grow from $27.42 billion in 2015 all the way to $72.21 billion by the year 2020.

What are geospatial data analysis services good for? For one thing, they can track how many of an item are purchased, such as laptops or smart phones, and where their owners go and when, and all of this movement information helps client retailers figure out how to better market their products and where to place their physical stores. This can be thought of as “location, location, location,” but in terms of how people move around in real time, creating a map of movement that retailers can use to good effect. This is often done by means of RFID tags, which capture data and track movement of the objects in which they are installed. 12 million such tags were so9ld in 2011, and estimates suggest that by 2021, over 209 billion of them will be sold as the Internet of Things continues to grow. These geospatial tracking services are useful not only for tracking where customers go, but also for keeping tabs on traveling business professionals, such as those on a business trip. This can help ensure that the employee is behaving as they should. GPS tracking devices are often used in vehicles as well, either privately owned ones or public ones such as snow plows or cargo trucks. This can be useful if such vehicles become lost or stolen, and they can be tracked down and recovered no matter where they go.