Safe Software 15 anniversary

Fifteen years ago, two young and ambitious fellows from Canada founded Safe Software in their quest to deliver a technology solution that would help meet a critical need for the geospatial industry: spatial data interoperability. Today, the company's FME technology platform is well established as the solution of choice for organizations worldwide looking for a better way to access the spatial data they need to use.

Established on December 13, 1993, Safe Software first began by developing translation technology to support a proprietary format developed by the BC Government called the Spatial Archive and Interchange Format (SAIF) – which by the way, is where the company gets it's name. It was during this initial project that Safe Software's co-founders Don Murray and Dale Lutz realized that spatial data interoperability challenges were a common frustration for organizations looking to use geospatial data to meet their requirements. In response to this need, they began developing a technology solution that would help organizations efficiently resolve these difficult challenges.

Future plans of the company include enabling the availability of FME technology on the cloud. Safe Software will also continue to add support for key geospatial formats in future releases, including popular raster, 3D and BIM formats. The geospatial industry can also expect to see continued integration with ETL solutions like IBM Websphere, Informatica and Microsoft SSIS, as well as increased support for common web services.