GIS Cloud has just entered its public beta phase. GIS Cloud is an online "GIS for the web". The 'cloud' in the name refers to it being SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). It is unclear if it is implemented in true 'cloud' fashion (eg. like Amazon EC2 or Microsoft's Azure). Unlike the vast bulk of the "geo-web" systems we cover, this is much more than a simple map viewer/annotator/query engine; but allows more GIS-like data operations.

The client is Adobe Flash based, which should provide a smooth customer experience. However, there are increasing questions about Flash's long term suitability for geo-web application. It also won't work on the iPad if you are Mac-head.

Basic usage licenses are free, but these have limited performance and data storage. Commercial pricing has not been published yet, but appears to be limited on actual usage (rather than calendar time) and actual usage rates will fluctuate during the day according to server load.

An API is also reportedly available, but information has yet to be made public. I assume this is due to the beta status of the service.

The GIS Cloud beta currently supports ESRI Shapefiles, Mapinfo MIF files, various rasters (JPEG, GeoTIFF,TIFF,SID,SRTM HGT, WMS, Google Maps), USGS DEM, PostGIS, KML, and GML.

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