The Microsoft Bing Enterprise Mapping team approached Earthware two months ago, with an idea to communicate their monthly imagery releases to clients and partners in a more visually engaging format.

With each month’s imagery release potentially covering hundreds of updated locations worldwide the current system of publishing a simple list of all the locations was not demonstrating the full impact of each release. Microsoft was also keen to use their latest Bing Maps Silverlight control, to create a visually rich interactive mapping application which could be both a showcase for the monthly updates, and the possibilities that Silverlight and Bing maps can offer.

Microsoft were also keen to host the new application on the Windows Azure platform to show the flexibility of combining Azure services with the Bing Enterprise maps.

        

Why Earthware?

Earthware already had extensive experience with Bing maps and the new Silverlight control after taking part in the closed beta program in early 2009. As part of this Earthware produced a Twitter map demo application which Microsoft demoed as part of the Bing Maps Silverlight control’s release publicity. The Twitter demo also used the Azure platform.

What did we deliver?

• A visually rich mapping application using Microsoft’s Bing Maps Silverlight Control and hosted on the Windows Azure platform.
   
• A secure back office administration area to allow the Microsoft team to quickly, and easily, add and update monthly imagery release information.
   
• A back end database built upon the Windows Azure table storage service.
   
• The entire first release of the Bing Maps World Tour application was delivered in less than six weeks and in time for the challenging May 2009 imagery release deadline.
   

Try the finished Bing Maps World Tour application for yourself on the Bing Maps Website or read more about the application at the official Bing maps blog. You can also see the reaction of the developer community to the applications release on twitter.

If you are interested in Earthware helping you to create similar interactive animated mapping applications for your products please visit our interactive mapping consultancy page.