“Industry estimates are that 80 percent of data has some sort of geographic reference component,” explained Mark Morrison, CEO for IDV Solutions. “That could be sales territories, a plant location, retail locations, a pipeline, a truck route. We’re all visual beings. We all understand things better with a picture than we do in a spreadsheet, so we’re appealing to how we behave. People don’t think in spreadsheets. We think in terms of, ‘What happened?’ ‘Where did it happen?’ So our whole company is built around that.”

“From avian bird flu to disaster response, tsunamis, hurricanes, terrorists, the maps are the first place you turn to make sense of a situation,” added Ian Clemens, chief technology officer for IDV. “‘Where was it?’ is fundamental.”

Clemens and Morrison have taken Internet mapping to a whole new level. For example, oil companies can track hurricanes in the Gulf in real time in relation to their specific sites and whether they need to evacuate their employees.

“We work with large organizations, that can be government or the private sector,” said Clemens. “We have clients like Toyota, BP Oil, Reuters and the federal government. They have a lot of data being generated, and there is a big problem making sense of all of that data. How can they make it more intuitive and digestible to the people who need to make decisions? Therein enters data visualization, making it come alive through charts, graphics, and maps—and maps are primary for our company. We do that through a standard Web browser, and we have software that ties into that ongoing data and information. That can be human resources systems; media, like pictures and documents; and performance charts. Primarily, we do that through geographic maps which overlay data.”

“We are taking off very rapidly because people get it,” said Morrison. “You’ve got this very rich, understandable data source in a map, and then you bring in the relevant data that they need to act on to solve their problems. We’ve actually had Bill Gates demonstrate our technology at a CEO summit this past summer, where he showed 100 CEOs across the globe how interactive and understandable data can be in the context of locational intelligence, so that was an exciting point in our company’s history.”

Clemens and Morrison founded the company with just the two of them in January 2004, building their own software called Visual Fusion Suite, in what they refer to as a “Microsoft environment.” IDV Solutions now has about 30 clients and 45 employees. Both men are from this area, so they plan to grow the business in Lansing and take advantage of the availability of computer science graduates from Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Central Michigan University to help with that growth.

“Our target market is global 1,000 companies and large government organizations,” said Clemens. “Our stuff fits where there is a lot of data. In smaller organizations, there are easier ways to understand their data.”

In the future, Clemens sees the company moving into 3-D mapping.

“We’ve just started to open up opportunities in what we’re doing,” noted Morrison. “We’re paving new ground here, and setting new standards.”

IDV Solutions has already made its mark, being named one of Michigan’s Top 50 Companies to Watch in 2006 by the Edward Lowe Foundation and the Small Business Association of Michigan. It was also a Microsoft Rookie Partner of the Year for 2006 and has earned two BP Oil awards.

“Right now, we’re in the middle of producing a Microsoft HDTV movie about crisis management like the hurricane management system we built for BP Oil,” noted Morrison.

The movie is a three-way partnership between BP, Microsoft and IDV Solutions.

“Microsoft is going to show it to 50,000 people in the next six months,” added Clemens. “That’s bringing the power of what we do out to the world, and we’re endorsing it as a humanitarian effort. The BP hurricane management system is built to protect the BP people. Microsoft is going to distribute it at the oil and gas conference, to developers, the computer programmers’ conference, sales and marketing conferences, and then at Microsoft product conferences, which is probably going to be more than 50,000 people.”

IDV Solutions has also provided security mapping services for the Detroit Super Bowl and the 2006 Torino Olympics, and intends to do so again in London in 2010.

“We have a great team here,” Clemens stated. “It’s all about our people. It’s a great culture. It’s fun, creative and innovative.”

“We truly have the best people on the planet,” said Morrison. “These are smart, humble, highly educated, creative people that are making this company a success.”

“And we’re making a difference in these companies where we’re helping them to protect their people and assets, and helping to make things better for them,” said Clemens. “We’re having a global impact.”