Before founding his own firm, Castle Consulting, Castle wasregional director of the Roulac Group at Deloitte & Touche.Prior to that, Castle was VP at Comarc Systems. In addition toediting several books about GIS, Castle writes a column forBusiness Geographics magazine.

Castle is charged with helping the year-old company launch itsreal-time, Internet-based site selection, acquisition andmanagement solution for retailers and hoteliers. "We're notdevelopers or brokers," says Castle. "We are automating thesite-approval process, the overall intent being to shorten the timeit takes to find, approve and secure a site by about 30%."

The Vectiv application is known as the Strategic Real EstateSolution. SRES integrates data from a wide range of sources, andputs it all together in a customized platform for individualclients. According to Castle, clients will be able to view spatialdata, broker listings, government and legal data, demographicinformation and local amenities, all on a single site. The companyhopes this information will allow decision-makers to get a betteroverall picture of a potential location, in less time than withtraditional methods. The target audience for the softwareapplication is big-box retailers and hotels.