OGC Standards
We are on the process of getting our products into OpenGIS standards. OpenGIS specifications are developed in a unique consensus process supported by OGC industry, government and academic members to enable geoprocessing technologies to interoperate, or "plug and play". The use of Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC) web services(OWS) allow different web mapping applications to share data with each other or with other applications.
Interoperability
Interoperability of GIS (i.e. the capability to integrate and access transparently remote data and processes in an Open environment) is currently a central research and development effort for the geographic data processing community. It is encouraged, enabling complex data types to be compared in unexpected methods. It is fueled by the growing need for developing applications based on interaction among various hardware and software components located at different sites, owned by different "vendors", and designed for widely differing application domains.