All Gateway Horizons products and solutions are powered by MapMatrix NETGis distribution platform that enables web services-based distributed GIS information networks. These networks give a flexible, secure, real-time view of all the data that is scattered throughout databases and other systems such as desktop PCs and web sites. No solution delivering this level of information connectivity has existed previously. Even though countless hardware and software platforms exist, Gateway Horizons can tie them together securely, even across organizational, agency and geographic boundaries.

Often, multi-agency projects resort to expensive "data warehousing", essentially copying sensitive data into an enormous repository, out of the control of the originating agency and eliminating real-time access. Gateway Horizons bests the data warehousing technique by accessing data where it is naturally stored, live and in real time. This leaves data owners in control of their own information and a strong security model ensures control over who has access to what information.

Distributed information networking has many significant advantages over other networking models such as client-server computing, data warehousing and enterprise application integration (EAI). First, it does away with the central spidering paradigm, in favor of a continuous, real-time, bottom-up, self-cataloging approach. Each server automatically as needed performs central metadatabase updates, involving only servers on the familial path to the root server. No time is wasted recataloging unchanged information already in the central index, as happens with spidering. This ensures that the centrally stored metadata is always current and always represents all content on every server.

• Web services-enabled connections securely exposing the full range of information
• Fully distributed and decentralized architecture
• Scalable from intranet to global levels of interconnectivity
• Leverages current investments in hardware and software by extending existing systems, not replacing them
• Connects servers, databases, desktop PCs, mobile and phone devices
• Control of data remains with owners
• Allow only secure, authenticated access to sensitive data
• Cost effective and time efficient
• Dynamically accessing distributed data in real-time
• Interoperates with wide variety of platforms and data types
• Using web services to build and enable solutions
• Automatic data discovery
• Extremely high performance