Geographic information software company Esri Global Inc., which provides spatial analytics and other services to the defense industry and others, said today it has acquired the geospatial and activity-based intelligence provider ClearTerra for an undisclosed fee.

Esri’s flagship product is its ArcGIS mapping and analytics platform, which provides contextual tools for mapping and spatial reasoning so users can explore data and share location-based insights. The basic premise of the platform is that it creates a deeper understanding of where data is coming from, so users can easily see where things are happening and how that information is connected.

By acquiring ClearTerra, Esri said, it will be able to add new capabilities to its platform that make it easier to discover and extract GPS coordinates from unstructured data sources, such as emails and reports, in order to generate intelligent map-based information more quickly.

Esri said this capability will be especially beneficial for its customers in the defense, intelligence and public safety industries, as these organizations tend to deal with massive volumes of unstructured data on a daily basis.

ClearTerra’s former vice president of sales, Jeff Wilson, who now serves as an executive for defense and intelligence with Esri, said the acquisition made sense for both companies as they have been working closely together for several years already. “Esri has the platform and resources to provide a solid path going forward for our technology, allowing us to expand this capability to the global market,” Wilson said.

ClearTerra’s main offering is its LocateXT technology, which is able to rapidly scan thousands of documents without reading them to identify geographic information that can be used for spatial analytics. The company also offers a second product called the FindFZ platform, which provides enhanced search capabilities for the ArcGIS platform, such as tolerance for misspelled words and Boolean logic search, which is a form of algebra in which all values are reduced to either true or false.

Esri said ClearTerra’s services would continue to be supported for existing customers with no interruptions.

Image: Esri