PERTH, Australia–In a major boost to the use of the ISO standard JPEG 2000 image format for Geospatial imagery, Earth Resource Mapping (ERM) has released its ECW JPEG 2000 Software Development Kit (SDK). The SDK enables application developers to add support for ECW and JPEG 2000 image files. This SDK is an upgrade to the existing, widely used ECW SDK.

Open standard environments provide flexibility and investment protection. They release companies from “single-vendor solutions”, as their data and application infrastructure is not “locked” into a single proprietary format.

ERM is leading the development of enterprise solutions for large imagery deployments across applications and the Internet. The release of the ECW JPEG 2000 SDK takes this one step further, providing multi-terabyte image management for JPEG 2000 files.

Over 250 software vendors are already using the ECW SDK to add ECW support to their applications. It is expected that these applications will migrate to the new ECW JPEG 2000 SDK. Adding JPEG 2000 support to existing ECW enabled applications is headache free for application developers. It is simply a matter of compiling against the new libraries contained within the SDK.

“The ECW SDK already has a large user base. The release of the ECW JPEG 2000 SDK is going to put JPEG 2000 onto tens of thousands of desktops around the world,” said Mike Dunne, ERM’s Chief Technical Officer.

Mr. Dunne continued, “Having ECW and JPEG 2000 support in the same application is going to be great for imagery users. People will be able to choose the format that best suits a given task. It presents a no-hassle approach to imagery management”.

ERM is world renowned as the leading geospatial imagery specialist. ERM has applied its expertise to the JPEG2000 format and delivered a high performance SDK.

Stuart Nixon, ERM’s founder and CEO, said, “We are a company that uses everything in our power to deliver the most efficient, technologically advanced solutions. This is the ethos we have taken in developing the ECW JPEG2000 SDK. Our technology caters for even the most demanding imagery users. Applications that use our ECW JPEG 2000 SDK are using the very best technology that is available.”

To support the uptake of JPEG 2000, the software development kit is available in 3 different licenses. Two of the licenses are completely free so that software vendors can add ECW and JPEG2000 support without any financial hurdle.

The unlimited decompression/limited compression for any application and the unlimited decompression/unlimited compression GPL style license are free to use. Only strictly commercial ventures that want unlimited compression in commercial products have to pay a once-off and royalty free payment for the SDK. The payment includes the complete source code for the SDK.

“With our generous licensing options, there is no reason why everyone’s own particular favorite imagery application doesn’t support JPEG 2000 and ECW,” said Mr. Nixon.

ERM will be adding JPEG 2000 support to all its software applications by the end of 2004.

The ECW JPEG2000 SDK is available for download at www.ermapper.com/downloads/.

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