About the Author

Colin Henderson is a spatial solutions architect with 14 years of experience working on solutions to complex spatial problems. He is currently the Geospatial Systems Capability Lead for Atkins, one of the world's leading design, engineering, and project management consultancies. Although experienced in a wide range of proprietary GIS software, his current focus is on specializing in the integration of open source software in complex enterprise environments. His most recent projects involve the integration of GeoServer with FME Server from Safe Software and the delivery of spatial web-mapping applications through Esri's ArcGIS for the Server platform and Latitude Geographics' Geocortex framework. Colin is the Technical Architect and Lead Developer of Atkins' open source-based spatial integration platform, CIRRUSmaps™, a solution built on the best breed of open source spatial software, including PostGIS and OpenLayers, with GeoServer at its heart, and designed from the ground-up for deployment in cloud environments.

A self-confessed techie, Colin enjoys digging deeper to understand technology and software, and then applying this learning to create innovative solutions to problems. When possible, he likes to "pay it forward" by helping others with their problems, through contributions on GIS Stack Exchange, in particular.

I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of my grandfather, John Denis Stevens, who sadly passed away while I was writing and never got to see the finished product. He often liked to say "these computer things will never catch on!"

I would like to thank my parents for buying me my first computer, I really enjoyed breaking it and then trying to get it working again. Without the introduction, my curiosity of all things computers would never have happened.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Amy, and children, Evie and Max, for their patience during the writing process; I love you all very much.