improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . learn how and when to remove these template messages this article relies largely or entirely upon a single source . relevant discussion may be found on the talk page . please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources . august 2012 this article contains content that is written like an advertisement . please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view . july 2009 learn how and when to remove this template message learn how and when to remove this template message lizardtech inc. type public industry software founded santa fe new mexico u.s. 1992 headquarters seattle washington u.s. products geoexpress express server number of employees 30 august 2008 parent celartem inc. website http www.lizardtech.com lizardtech is a geospatial software company headquartered in seattle washington notable for transferring the wavelet based mrsid image encoding and viewing technology from initial development by the u.s. government to the geospatial market . lizardtech s products enable users to compress manipulate and distribute high resolution geospatial data such as aerial satellite imagery and lidar data . the company is a division of celartem inc. hercules 4330 and has offices in tokyo and london . its sister company extensis is based in portland oregon . lizardtech was founded in 1992 to commercialize the mrsid technology and file format originally developed at los alamos national laboratory lanl in new mexico . the name of the company is an homage to the lizards of the new mexican desert . contents 1 history 2 lizardtech and open standards 3 awards and honors 4 development rights and patents 5 see also 6 references history edit after working together at los alamos john r grizz deal and dr. vance faber formed lizardtech to move the mrsid multi resolution seamless image database technology from lanl where it was developed for government applications into the wider arena of private industry . they recruited dr. jim white from lanl and peter crook from the private sector to drive the first commercial wavelet based image compression product lizardtech s early mrsid geoencoder software later renamed geoexpress was designed specifically for geospatial professionals working with massive sets of aerial and satellite imagery . the united states geological survey usgs was one of the early adaptors and the national information mapping agency now called the national geospatial intelligence agency and many other government agencies have since embraced the mrsid format . it is now supported by more than 300 gis applications including those of esri erdas erdas imagine autodesk and intergraph . in the mid 1990s lizardtech moved its headquarters to seattle washington where it was identified in 1998 as the washington software alliance s most promising new company . in 2000 still a privately owned company funded by venture capital lizardtech released its content server software product later renamed express server a server add on that leveraged efficiencies in wavelet based image compression to stream image data over networks on an as needed basis as users navigated imagery . with the slow but steady emergence of another wavelet based compression technology the powerful but complex jpeg 2000 iso standard iso iec 15444 1 2000 lizardtech launched an aggressive r & d program to incorporate jpeg 2000 into its software products and became experts in jpeg 2000 compression for the geospatial industry . a by product of this research was a gradual shift toward more use of open source tools and software and cooperation with the open source development community . deal and faber left lizardtech in 2002 . in 2003 the company was purchased by celartem inc. a tokyo based imaging technology company . 1 the same year lizardtech joined the open geospatial consortium ogc . in 2005 lizardtech began adding tools to its basic compression product with the aim of supporting geospatial users from a workflow standpoint such as reprojection area of interest encoding and color balancing . that year the company also released spatial express an api and set of tools for storing and retrieving wavelet compressed imagery in an oracle database . from 2006 onward development focused on interoperability of lizardtech s products with each other and with the broader geospatial ecosystem . lizardtech rolled out its express suite all three of its geospatial products together in 2007 . the 2008 release of geoexpress 7 completed the work of making geoexpress spatial express and express server all interoperate fully for the first time . in 2000 lizardtech negotiated exclusive rights to commercially develop and market the djvu technology developed at at & t laboratories in 1996 . the company hoped to widen its market from raster imaging only mainly in the geospatial arena to include the complex raster and vector imaging necessary in the growing document imaging industry . lizardtech developed the document express enterprise and professional level products in the years 2000 2006 . djvu based solutions were most successful in asia and in 2007 celartem began transferring all aspects of djvu development to its tokyo headquarters . celartem usa now handles all aspects of djvu marketing sales and support in the u.s. the mrsid image format continues to be an important compressed image format for geospatial applications and is supported in virtually all gis software products . it is required as a delivery format by the usda s national agriculture imagery program naip . interest in jpeg 2000 has grown slowly but steadily as users become aware of the standard s capabilities for carrying georeferencing and other xml based metadata via the geography markup language gml as well as for fine tuning compression parameters for particular workflows . lizardtech and open standards edit lizardtech sits on ogc s technical committee and has been a chief contributor citation needed in extending the capabilities of jpeg 2000 to geospatial applications . the lack of a geospatial metadata standard had meant that applications and viewers may or may not be able to read geospatial metadata in jpeg 2000 files . together with galdos systems also an ogc member lizardtech developed a geography markup language gml implementation of jpeg 2000 that was ratified by the ogc in february 2006 . called gmljp2 this implementation furthers the interoperability of jpeg 2000 as a geospatial image format and helps customers disseminate and maximize return on investment from geospatial imagery by providing a consistent vendor independent image format . awards and honors edit the washington software alliance named lizardtech most promising new company in 1998 . lizardtech received an honorable mention in the innovation award category for its express suite family of products during the geospatial leadership awards ceremony at the 2008 geotec event in ottawa ontario . development rights and patents edit lizardtech holds exclusive rights to develop and market the mrsid technology and holds a number of patents . see also edit lizardtech inc. v. earth resource mapping inc. a court case involving a patent licensed to lizardtech . references edit celartem company history retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title lizardtech & oldid 732427232 categories software companies based in seattlecompanies established in 1992geographic data and information companieshidden categories articles needing additional references from august 2012all articles needing additional referencesarticles with a promotional tone from july 2009all articles with a promotional toneall articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from may 2016 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views 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