Expert to Expert: Gur Kimchi - Inside Bing Maps (aka Virtual Earth)

Posted: Jun 17, 2009 at 10:54 AM

By: Charles

(3)

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6 Comments

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Erik Meijer and I paid a visit to Bing Maps infrastructure architect and Partner Development Manager Gur Kimchi for an Expert to Expert conversation about the design and architecture of Bing Maps. It takes some rocket science to process and coerce data into accurate information representative of points of interest on planet Earth. How does Bing Maps work, at the deepest levels, in the cloud? Gur and team have created a very efficient back end system that computes and returns the information you seek when using Bing Maps. Tune in. This is yet another great conversation among experts (not including myself, of course - I need to limit my caffeine intake before E2E's going forward... Smiley

).

Enjoy!

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jomit

Jun 19, 2009 at 2:00 AM

Not optimizing is not an option! I like that man.

Again an excellent E2E video with lots of insights, especially the details about the data centers which runs these maps and how Microsoft optimized it.
Jsoh :::Windows 8 Style UI :::

Jun 21, 2009 at 9:22 AM

This was a great interview. I really enjoyed the end-to-endness of the conversation. The historical perspective gained though Gur's storytelling is awesome.

I'm pleased to hear how the Virtual Earth team's solution to serving the bits is setting the industry benchmark for efficiency.

I also find the experience of having the topics of other interviews, such as ultra-cam and sea-dragon, woven-in very engaging.

Since there is a lot of innovation around VE, it is hard to determine what features are live vs future features vs possible features. For example, there was a conversation about two people, working out of two cities and utilizing VE to find a sushi bar somewhere of equal drive time between the two.

Is this a live, planed, or possible feature?
GaryB

Jun 24, 2009 at 5:48 PM

What a ridiculous shirt. Is this supposed to be edgy or something? And are those stuffed animals in his office? Do they tell this guy how hip he is?
Charles Welcome Change

Jun 25, 2009 at 11:52 AM

Do you have a question? Apparently not. Move along.

C
wmdigital

Jul 07, 2009 at 10:07 AM

This is a great discussion with someone who obviously has an enterprise level approach to his work.

How much of this is 85/85 is related to knowledge gained from viewing building sides and faces? Is the caching model separate from this data or irrelevant?
natelawrence

Nov 18, 2010 at 10:17 AM

I think we must have Gur back to talk again.
This is a long time favorite, Charles.
Robert Scoble did a quick video of some of Vexcel's containers out in Colorado for those of you who are interested in seeing what they look like:
A look at Bing Maps' fivepetabyte shipping container