WAYLAND, MA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- Jun 02, 2010 -- The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) ( http://www.opengeospatial.org) announced that lat/lon ( http://www.lat-lon.de) has become a Principal Member of the OGC.

Principal Members evaluate and provide guidance on market direction and Consortium focus, and have authority over the development, release and adoption of OGC standards through their voting rights in the OGC Planning Committee (PC).

lat/lon has been active participant in the OGC since the company's founding and has contributed to the development of numerous OGC standards and compliance tests. By the terms of the company's Principal Membership memorandum of understanding with the OGC, lat/lon will provide significant resources to support the OGC's Compliance Testing and Certification Program.

Athina Trakas, OGC's Director of Business Development in Europe, said, "lat/lon's move to Principal Membership in the OGC reflects their understanding of the importance of OGC knowledge and participation in meeting the business needs of the community. Their success is also a reflection of how Germany and Europe have committed to interoperability based on open standards."

Dr. Christian Kiehle, lat/lon's technical OGC representative, sees the commitment to standardization and compliance as an important milestone: "OGC standards have become the backbone of many productive spatial information systems. lat/lon is very happy that our long-term contribution to OGC's CITE initiative has laid the foundation for this promising collaboration."

About lat/lon

lat/lon is a Germany-based consulting and software engineering company founded in 2000 focused on Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), geospatial IT standards and Open Source software. lat/lon is the main developer of the deegree project ( http://www.deegree.org/), the most substantial implementation of OGC and ISO standards in the field of open software. It builds the foundation for numerous productive components of spatial data infrastructures -- in Germany, Europe and all over the world.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 395 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.

Contact:

Lance McKee
Senior Staff Writer
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

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