The Open Geospatial Consortium, founded in 1994,  is an international consortium to develop and maintain geospatial standards. The organization actively forges alliances and provides support, data, and education for the geospatial community. The foundations projects are freely available at www.osgeo.

The group has announced a new member in Microsoft who joined this summer as an OGC principal member. Microsoft’s interest in the OGC is to ensure compatibility for its Virtual Earth and SQL Server 2008 with OpenGIS. As a principal member, Microsoft will serve on the OGC’s Planning Committee and participate across OGC activities.

In addition, the Open Design Alliance has announced a partnership with the OGC to promote and strengthen the use of open standards for location and geospatial industries. Their goal is to strengthen the use of open standards for location and geospatial industries.

OGC’s leadership in creating open standards forms a natural synergy with ODA’s expertise in standards implementation. The partnership between OGC and ODA is intended to develop and strengthen this synergy to the benefit of both organizations, and to the broader community.

Nadine Alameh, OGC CEO, said, “OGC and ODA have complementary efforts to achieve data interoperability. OGC is excited to work with ODA to help our respective members and the larger user community do more with BIM, CAD, and Geospatial data.”

“ODA is very pleased to be partnering with OGC,” said Neil Peterson, ODA President. “ODA and OGC have a significant number of common members, and this cooperation will help to fast-track projects that are of key interest to both organizations.”