Wayland, Mass, and Uttar Pradesh, India, September 16, 2005 – The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) and GIS Development Pvt. Ltd recently entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to grow the market for interoperable geospatial solutions in Asia Pacific and Middle East. The agreement formalizes the organizations' past relationship and details plans for the development and delivery of relevant education programs, conferences, and publications to accelerate awareness and uptake of OGC standards. They also work together to attract organizations from the areas into OGC membership and GIS Development programs.OGC's strategic goals include strengthening OGC standards implementations and membership representation in the geographies. GIS Development promotes the use of geospatial technologies for the community at large by fostering the growing network of those interested in geo-informatics worldwide.Sanjay Kumar, CEO of GIS Development, said, “Working with OGC enables us to provide our readers, website visitors and conference attendees with information that is critical to their creation of interoperable Web-based geospatial architectures and solutions.”David Schell, CEO of OGC, explained that “OGC's mission is to lead the global development, promotion and harmonization of open geospatial standards. Building on GIS Development's outreach activities will enable us to effectively inform organizations about OGC process, standards and benefits.”The OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 280 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS® Specifications support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.GIS Development strives to promote and propagate the usage of geospatial technologies in various areas of development for the community at large. It remains dedicated to foster the growing network of those interested in geo-informatics worldwide and Asia in particular. Through its activities, it assists community and government in developing capabilities and policies and facilitates knowledge transfer to grassroots users. More information on publications on conferences is available at www.GISdevelopment.net, www.mapasia.org and www.mapindia.org.”