Have you ever shared a location in WhatsApp? That list of close-by places comes from a geocoding service. When you request a car service, like Didi, the route that the drivers take comes from a routing service. Have you ordered a pizza in Seamless? The maps that show you where the restaurant is located is a basemap service. We call all those services Location Data Services and you are using them all the time.
For quite some time, price and terms have been an enormous barrier to using these important services. The cost puts these services out of reach for organizations and individuals that wanted to perform data analysis and extract location intelligence or even consider it. Imagine if you had to pay every time you wanted to access the GPS on your phone, there would not be so many apps making use of your location. We believe a level of accessibility needs to happen for these Location Data Services to realize all their potential.
We are firm believers that Open Data and Open Source will enable this change in the industry, and fortunately we are not alone in this belief. Mapzen, an Open Source mapping company, has been working hard over the last few years on a complete set of Open Source tools and a data processing engine to make this a reality. It is in their DNA.
Partnering with Mapzen
We are excited to partner with Mapzen to continue our efforts in liberating Location Data Services! A few months ago we started working together, collaborating on technology and aligning our strategies. We discussed what it takes to provide great Location Data Services, and today we are happy to announce a partnership with them!
Randy Meech, Mapzen CEO, has decided to learn Spanish, and is starting today with an enterprise quote.
CartoDB es bueno, ellos querer valor anadido encima de Location Data, y eso es buena idea! — Randy Meech
Under this partnership, CartoDB is commercializing Location Data Services built collaboratively with Mapzen.
Use inside CartoDB or as a stand-alone service that you can OEM and integrate into your application. Check out for example this visualization of tweets over time making use of CartoDB Torque capabilities and Vector Basemaps with Tangram.
Developer friendly, Enterprise ready
Mapzen and CartoDB both offer a very generous free tier for those users that want to try or use the service out of the box.
And for those organizations that require commercial services, we think we have a pretty sweet package:
Custom limits and quotas for basemaps, geocoding, and routing
Service level agreements available
Professional services for custom requirements and implementations
Use it in private or paywall apps on mobile, web and, desktop
The Mapzen and CartoDB Location Data Services are only going to get better over time as we continue to integrate our product offerings. In the meantime we’re open for business and are already working with clients to provide these services.
At CartoDB we believe the future of this industry will be created by friendly collaboration between companies, and this partnership with Mapzen is the first “next generation” alliance we will see in this space, and we think this is GOOD.
Check out our new Location Data Services page to learn more about these services and drop us a note if you want to discuss them.