Simon Greener

Simon Greener has university qualifi cations in geomatics, computing science, database technologies, and project management. He started his working career with mining and surveying experience. He then found his calling as a computer scientist with his fi rst job as a database programmer on IBM mainframes for Telstra. He switched to GIS three years later through working in a multi-disciplinary GIS research team at Telecom's Research Laboratories (TRL) in Clayton, Victoria. While at TRL, he...See more

Simon Greener has university qualifi cations in geomatics, computing science, database technologies, and project management. He started his working career with mining and surveying experience. He then found his calling as a computer scientist with his fi rst job as a database programmer on IBM mainframes for Telstra. He switched to GIS three years later through working in a multi-disciplinary GIS research team at Telecom's Research Laboratories (TRL) in Clayton, Victoria. While at TRL, he worked on projects whose outcome saw the creation of what is now Telstra's Sensis group. After leaving TRL, he worked as a lecturer and consultant for CenSIS (University of Tasmania) under Professor Peter Zwart, writing student and technical training courses. While there, he continued to consult to Telstra's Directory Services and Mobile groups. It was here that he came in contact with the Spatial DataBase Engine (SDBE) from Geographic Technologies Incorporated (GTI) and saw its potential for the management of large scale spatial databases within relational database technologies, a merging of his IT and GIS worlds. This led to the foundation of Salamanca Software Pvt Ltd (SalSoft), for which he was a Director until it was purchased by ESRI Australia in 1996. Some notable achievements while at SalSoft included helping brokers with the sale of SDBE to ESRI Inc (now ArcSDE), winning the fi rst ArcSDE sale to Telstra to power its White pages/Yellow pages mapping portal, co-authoring a geocoding specifi cation for Spatial Decision Systems (now Sensis), consulting for Geographic Technologies Australia on numerous projects based on Universal Press street directory data, and the creation of GeoCASE/Blueprint, the world's fi rst data modeling tool that enabled the modeling of spatial data and relationships. In 1997, he was appointed GIS Manager for Forestry Tasmania (FT) in Hobart, Tasmania. While at FT, he architected the complete revamp of FT's GIS systems using Oracle Spatial (being one of the earliest adopters of the Sdo_Geometry implementation) as the core data management technology. He was concentrating on embedding geospatial data and processing within business systems via a valueoriented, business-centric computing model. He designed and built numerous systems during those years, the best of which was MapComposer, a three-click web-enabled business map production system that, when he left in 2005, had grown (2000-) to over 320 online uses, producing over 50,000 maps a year from a repository of over 100 different map templates (still in operation in 2013). His years at FT concluded with the writing of a GIS Strategy that saw the use of GIS increase yet the cost of the technology to the organization decrease. He left FT in September 2005 for the precarious world of self-employment. He was a sometime copyist for Directions Magazine. As a subcontractor to a Spatial distributor in Australia, he wrote a Radius Topology training course and provided Radius Topology and Oracle Spatial consulting services for them at numerous customer sites until May 2006. From May to August 2006, he was engaged by Spatial, Cambridge, UK, under a UK Government Department of Trade and Industry's GlobalWatch program to conduct research and development in relation to enhancing the export potential of their latest product, Radius Studio (this resulted in Radius Studio being integrated with Feature Data Objects - FDO technology to extend its data access capabilities). In his consulting career, he has written a spatial strategy document and conducted a database performance analysis review for a large Tasmanian Government department. He has conducted a number of Oracle spatial database best practice, tender and system, and... See less