Do local Bing Maps servers or Google Earth servers exist?

Question

Is it possible to have all the map data come from local server instead of Google Earth or Bing Map but still use their tools as front end.

For example Bing Map control (from their SDK) would be talking to some local server in the network. I want this kind of setup in a place where there is no internet and the client wants to use Bing Map toolset. Same question applies to Google Earth.

OR is it that its only possible with something like ArcGIS like server software but in that case Google Earth or Bing Map control won't be its front end.

Answer 1

Google Earth Enterprise Portable

A new product from the Google Enterprise Team

With the Google Earth Enterprise Portable solution your users can select and download portions of your private globe which they can serve and access locally from their laptop. Whether fighting fires or taking off in a plane, the Google Earth Enterprise portable gives your users the Google Earth experience when they are not connected to the Internet. The portable solution consists of: A simple user interface to the Google Earth Enterprise system enabling users to extract portions of a globe based on a user-defined area of interest. A light-weight, cross-platform server that serves the extract globe on an end users machine.

(note: the middle step is the important part 'private map data')

http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/portable.html

Answer 2

You should check out:

1. Google Earth Enterprise (http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/enterprise/earthmaps/earth_enterprise.html) This allows you to "Host Google Earth internally on an organisation's own servers and datasets."

2. Bing Maps 'Enterprise' (or similar) http://www.microsoft.com/maps/solutions/business-solutions/light-up-the-web.aspx

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

The Google Maps API does allow georeferenced image overlays, as well as KML overlays. So you could set up a server on your local network to serve KML, such as GeoServer or Mapserver 6.0 (when it comes out), although I'm not sure how Google Maps copes when it doesn't have it's base layer available.

Also, I'm not sure if what you propose is against the terms of the licence, but if you want to have functionality similar to that of Bing and Google Maps but with a less restrictive licence, then I can recommend OpenLayers. It's an easy to use javascript API which you can easily customise with Google/Bing-like functionality.