Service Streamlines Feds Decision Making

Questerra Wednesday announced the availability of its spatial data visualization Web service for the government sector powered by products and technology from Sun Microsystems Inc. and useful for homeland security and other applications.

The Charlottesville, Va., IT services company, a subsidiary of MeadWestvaco Corp., of Stamford, Conn., made its announcement at the E-Gov conference in Washington Wednesday. Questerra said its service leverages Suns technology to provide solutions strategic to Homeland Security initiatives and other federal applications. In fact, Questerra maintains that its Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE)-based solution offers an open platform that ensures interoperability across all government agencies, enabling better decision making by combining various information sources into an intuitive, intelligence mapping and collaborative service.

Questerra officials said the company provides government users with a secure Web-based system for solving public policy issues such as bio-terrorism risks. The Questerra solution links disparate datasets from hospitals, first responders, pharmacies, local authorities and others, and allows for collaborative, spatially enabled analysis.

Questerra chose Sun as its core infrastructure based on the companys hardware portfolio, storage solutions, Sun ONE and the integration of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based systems companys software products.

“Questerra is offering a premium service that gives e-government users a first-hand experience, allowing them to extend the value of geospatial technologies beyond the analysts and directly into the hands of front-line decision makers,” said Jack Nichols, Suns national sales manager, state and local government, in a statement. “Questerra offers deployment models that reduce risk and capital investment requirements, while providing high value to e-government users.”

Questerra utilizes an integrated solution from Sun including SAN storage, a tape library system, data management software, at least 12 enterprise-class Sun servers, and Sun ONE products such as Sun ONE Web Server and Sun ONE Application Server software, all running Sun Java applications, the company said.