alternative to Google maps

My client wants some of the functionality of Google maps namely: - geocoding - generating maps with points based on postal code or long.lat - optimal trip mapping

Their issues with Google maps - cannot control outages - postal codes are sometimes inaccurate or n开发者_运维知识库ot updated frequently for Canada/UK - they have no way to correct inaccurate information

They would prefer to host the mapping application themselves, but will require postal code updates.

Can anyone suggest such a product?

thanks

"cannot control outages - postal codes are sometimes inaccurate or not updated frequently for Canada/UK - they have no way to correct inaccurate information"

Outages

hosting your own mapping is the only way to control this, but you would be very very hard pushed to beat Google Maps / Bing Maps uptime over the last 5 years. Take a look at the following:

• OpenStreetMap for the road imagery data, this is open source data very good in the UK (Im not sure about canada) and you can make your own changes and submit them (or just change the data you have downloaded)

• Geoserver, Mapnik or MapServer will read openstreetmapdata and create the image tiles needed to create your own maps in whatever style you wish. Depending on if you dont want all countries and all zoom levels these products can create all the tiles you will need in advance, but usually they have to be created in real time and cached. You need a BIG fast server to manage tile crunching

• Openlayers or Leaflet are open source javascript mapping platforms that will display your tiles for you

Obviously this is just for road maps, aerial imagery would cost you an absolute fortune.

Post Code Data

Many people do not realize that UK postcode data for latitude and longitude is now completely free and available to download every quarter from the official source (ordinance survey) http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/code-point-open/index.html.

This is the same data source Google will use and there is none better but it will always contain inaccuracies and always be a few months out of date.

Finally

Hopefully that answer the question you asked and gives you information to inform your client. Now for the question you didn't ask "Is this approach good value to my client?".

I won't presume to know your business or client, however what I described above is possible but with one to many months of work involved to get it all working together and even then it wont have any where near the performance or uptime of something like google /bing maps and only offers a small subset of their features.

I think you're looking for something like Caliper-It's a very custom, and I would expect expensive, solution. Not suggested.

http://www.caliper.com/GISMappingSoftwareDevelopment.htm

One solution could be to use two different mapping services and compare their results, this way there's a much better chance the data is accurate. You can also fix inaccurate data by creating a system which acts as a barrier between the API and your user, where data you know is inaccurate is corrected before it's displayed. Not sure exactly what you're doing though, so this might not work for you.

Is trip mapping/routing the basic functionality you want to do?

Before rushing into rolling your own, I'd suggest a good think about the consequences of doing so. The first that springs to mind is whilst the pros are that you can now control your data, the cons are that you now control your data.

So you are going to have to consider where and when you get updates and the processes you are going to have to employ to keep your maps in sync with the rest of the world. There are a lot of headaches involved in these things which is why so many people use externally hosted solutions such as Googles.