PHYSICS

ESRI, the world's leading developer of geographic information system (GIS) software, announces that Polish Telecom Joint Stock Company (Telekomunikacja Polska S.A.) has implemented a decision support system (DSS) with underlying GIS technology from ESRI. Polish Telecom is one of the largest telecommunications operators in Europe, delivering services to more than 10 million business and individual subscribers in Poland. The company's large number of subscribers and wide network infrastructure necessitated a data management system incorporating both the supply and demand sides of its operations as well as competitor installations. To support this need, Polish Telecom implemented ComputerLand's GeoMarketing.CL, a DSS based on ESRI's GIS technology. Last year, ComputerLand conducted a pilot project to test the system that included 90 end users and 2.5 million subscribers in Warsaw. After the successful completion of the project, ComputerLand began rolling out the system in 37 major Polish cities to 2,500 end users and as many as 10 million subscribers. The main goal of the project is to optimize Polish Telecom's sales operations to increase its marketing campaign precision and investments efficiency. The GeoMarketing.CL DSS uses a GIS engine from ESRI to visualize and analyze data related to the supply of and demand for telecommunication services. This information is crucial for efficient network infrastructure development and, with demographic and statistical data, to estimate the demand for new services. The GeoMarketing.CL system is based on a three-layer architecture. The presentation layer allows Web-based map display using ESRI's MapObjects—Java components. The business logic layer is supported by BEA WebLogic middleware and manages Web-based and Enterprise JavaBeans applications. ESRI's ArcIMS ArcMap Server is responsible for map logic management and map delivery to the presentation layer. The data layer is based on the Oracle9i database environment, which is integrated with ArcSDE for data delivery to the business logic layer. Polish Telecom is currently performing a companywide system standardization and indicates that ESRI's GIS is its primary mapping solution. For this reason, ComputerLand's GIS solutions will be based on the ESRI environment.