CRESWICK, AUSTRALIA, Nov 15, 2012 - Sparx Systems, a leading vendor of modeling tools based on open standards, has announced that Dr. Paul Smits who heads up the geospatial activity at the European Joint Research Centre will visit Australia as the guest of Sparx Systems. He will be a featured speaker at the upcoming 2012 spatial@gov Conference being held at the Canberra Exhibition Centre from 20th to 22nd November.

Since 2007, when the INSPIRE Directive came in to force, the European Union has had a legal framework for the establishment of an infrastructure for the exchange and sharing of spatial information for the support of environmental policy development. Paul's presentation will highlight "initiatives that exploit the multi-purpose nature of INSPIRE for other sectors, including e-government."

Based in Australia, Sparx Systems has had a long relationship of support for the global geospatial standards development community, with Enterprise Architect being used by INSPIRE, ISO/TC 211, CEN/TC 287 and Open Geospatial Consortium in the development of key industry interoperability specifications and standards.

Dr. Smits noted "The relevance of the spatial@gov conference theme, 'People, Place and Policy' presents my visit to Canberra with Sparx Systems, as an important opportunity." He added "I am looking forward to sharing the experience of the development of INSPIRE, the European Spatial Data Infrastructure, with my Australian geospatial colleagues, in both the government and private sectors. While in Australia, I would like to expand the mutual working bonds that exist between our two communities."

Ken Harkin, Business Development Manager at Sparx Systems said, "Geospatial interoperability is creating a unique and exciting information currency that is driving global awareness of the implicit value of geospatial data. It is allowing information assets to be fully shared in new ways, locally, nationally and globally across industry and government sectors. In this context, Sparx Systems is delighted to have Dr Smits in Australia as our guest to share his experiences. During his visit he will meet with key Australian and New Zealand government and geospatial industry leaders."

Sparx Systems invites all attendees to visit their stand (#23) at spatial@gov along with its partner Geoplex: http://spatial.cebit.com.au

About Sparx Systems

Sparx Systems is an Australian company specializing in high performance and scalable visual modeling tools for the planning, design and construction of software intensive systems.

With customers in industries ranging from aerospace and automotive engineering to finance, defense, government, entertainment and telecommunications, Sparx Systems has won four consecutive SD Times awards and is the leading vendor of innovative solutions based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and its related specifications. A Contributing Member of the Object Management Group (OMG), Sparx Systems is committed to realizing the potential of model-driven development based on open standards.

The company's flagship product, Enterprise Architect, has received numerous accolades since its commercial release in August, 2000, including two Jolt and Visual Studio Magazine Reader's Choice Merit awards. Now at version 9.3, Enterprise Architect is the design tool of choice for over 300,000 registered users world-wide.