Putting big data on the map: helping customers see location-based information

Rahul Sood, Enterprise Director of Partnerships

Today, all types of businesses rely on geographic information to make better decisions about their customers, products and processes. As part of our ongoing effort to make geographic information accessible and useful, we offer the Google Maps API Premier to businesses that want to integrate Google Maps directly into their own applications and websites. Interactive maps have become critical to many basic business functions from asset tracking in the logistics industry to inventory planning in retail.

Earlier this week, we announced a new collaboration with SAP aimed at helping enterprise customers use Google’s mapping services with SAP’s business analytics software. As this demo from SAP shows, the Google Maps API lets companies visualize geographic data more easily, leading to better business decisions. Access to SAP and Google tools on tablets and other mobile devices means that employees can review their business data whenever and wherever the need arises.

Google is committed to helping businesses and software vendors build, run and support innovative applications that involve huge data sets. These “big data” sets require massive storage and processing power, a task Google’s cloud infrastructure is uniquely well suited to handle. Today, in addition to the Google Maps API, Google also provides the Google Prediction API and Google Storage for Developers to support businesses working with their important big data. Like the Google Maps API, businesses and developers can use these services to process data or build applications.