Microsoft last night announced new Azure Location Based Services that will allow you to add maps, search, routing, and traffic capabilities to your apps with geospatial services APIs that integrate seamlessly with other Azure tools and services. These new services will be available in early December.
Using these services, enterprise customers can build mobility, asset tracking and other geospatial applications that provide useful insights through one dashboard, one subscription and one bill. Since it is a Azure service, it also provides enterprises with the privacy, data sovereignty, compliance and scale they have come to expect from other Microsoft services.
Features:
- Search: Create apps that provide details about a point of interest (POI), including contact information, hours of operation, a location pinpointed on a map, and directions to its address. Search for businesses by name, category, or what’s closest to you.
- Traffic: Develop mobility solutions that improve travel time and avoid gridlock. You get multiple alternate routes around traffic jams, insight into the length of the backup and the time it takes to get through it, and faster travel during rush hour.
- Maps: Integrate clear, easy-to-read maps into your solutions with the JavaScript Map Control APIs or the Render API. The maps update dynamically—your customers get constantly refreshed information.
- Routing: Give your solutions the ability to navigate the shortest or fastest routes available—to multiple destinations at a time—or provide specialized routes and facts for walkers, bicyclists, and commercial vehicles.
- Geocoding: Make apps that turn latitude and longitude coordinates into street addresses—and switch street addresses to map coordinates. Use this data to ensure customers, goods, and drivers get to destinations on time.
Learn more about it here.