Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The company spent some 20 years doing work for central governments, OS and others, but in 2001 made the technology publicly available.

It has since been selling its intellectual property developed over these two decades to the spatial data market.

In 2003 the current management team staged a buy-out without the use of venture capital and has taken the net worth of the firm from £4.2m to £7+ in the intervening three years.

The Cambridge-based firm recently produced DMapS, a web-based, digital mapping system for recording and accessing spatial information relating to Land Title, for the Land Registry Ireland, garnering it industry recognition in the form of an Association of Geographic Information award.

The project was the result of a successful bid following a competition run through the Official Journal of the European Community.

DMapS replaces the old paper-based system of property boundaries wherein a single change in land registry had to be made to numerous data sources, slowing the application process considerably.

The DmapS software allows its users to load, store, update and deliver data that is stored on a database accessible to all of its users, thus greatly speeding-up the process.

This year, 1Spatial has applied its expertise to cut the time it took for the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner for Northern Ireland to define boundaries from one year to two months and its customer portfolio includes organisations from around the world in fields such as defence, national mapping agencies, government and utilities.