Founded in 1992, LizardTech pioneered the MrSID® file format, which became the de facto standard among the geospatial community. Before MrSID came along, dealing with geospatial imagery required specialized workstations, since datasets that were hundreds of megabytes in size were completely unwieldy, and imagery resolution was in the tens of meters. Imagery was practically unusable. The introduction of the MrSID format in 1992, which compressed georeferenced image data at high ratios without sacrificing the visual quality of the image, opened up the field of geospatial image use.
“I think the key to our success is that we listen to our customers and provide quality software that’s in demand,” said Jon Skiffington, director of product management. “At the end of the day it’s all about what our customers want and need, and developing a file format that’s been accepted by the majority of the geospatial community is the greatest achievement of all.”
At the Esri Federal GIS Conference Skiffington will be on hand to answer any questions pertaining to the history of the company. He will also be conducting demonstrations of GeoExpress® software, which enables geospatial professionals to compress and manipulate satellite and aerial imagery, Express Server® software for high-performance delivery and publication, and LiDAR Compressor™ software, which turns giant point cloud datasets into efficient MrSID files.
For more information about LizardTech’s geospatial software products, visit www.lizardtech.com
