02 · Architecture & design

Architecture that holds up at scale

Geospatial and cloud platform architecture for systems that need to be fast, affordable to run, and maintainable for years.

Get the hard parts right early

Spatial workloads punish weak architecture. Tile generation, routing, imagery, and large geometry queries can drive cloud bills up and response times down long before the rest of a system feels the strain.

We design platforms around how spatial data actually behaves: how it's stored, indexed, served, and updated. The result is documented, agreed, and buildable before significant money is spent.

Who it's for

Teams starting a new geospatial, location, or data platform
Organizations modernizing legacy GIS or moving mapping workloads to the cloud
Products hitting limits on performance, cost, or scale
Leaders who want an independent review before a major investment

Typical engagements

Reference architectures for geospatial platforms on Azure and open source
Spatial data pipelines for ingestion, tiling, imagery, elevation, and routing data
Data platform design with PostGIS, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Explorer, Databricks, or Cosmos DB
Cloud-optimized formats and catalogs: COG, PMTiles, GeoParquet, and STAC
Self-hosted and offline map stacks for desktop, mobile, browser, and WebAssembly
Platform migrations, including Bing Maps to Azure Maps and proprietary to open source
Architecture reviews with prioritized, actionable findings
Performance and cost optimization for existing systems

Outcomes

An architecture your team understands and agrees with
Predictable performance and cloud spend
Migrations without nasty surprises
Designs that are practical to build and operate

The experience behind it

Designed from the platform up

Our founder has designed the platforms that other developers build on, and the solutions that run on them for some of the world's largest organizations.

Designed the Azure Maps SDKs for Web, Android, and iOS, and the Bing Maps V8 web SDK API
Lead architect for a geospatial AI assistant with access to more than 100 PB of open data
Architected large-scale digital twins for critical infrastructure and real-time vehicle routing
Led customers through a difficult mapping platform migration while retaining more than 95% of them
Cross-platform offline mapping and self-hosted basemaps, elevation, routing, and imagery pipelines

How it's delivered

As a fixed-scope architecture engagement or review, or as part of a longer project where we design and then help build. More on how we engage.

Have a geospatial, cloud, or AI challenge in front of you?

Tell us what you're working on. We'll give you a straight answer on how we can help, or tell you if we're not the right fit.

Email info@northforgegeo.com Contact page