Simple architectures are core to scalable systems. Every day on our mobile devices we interact with mapping systems that rely on a simple concept popularized by Google Maps back in 2005, cached map tiles, or “slippy maps”. On Esri’s website there is an article titled “Tiles on a Cloud” dated 2009. Before that, in 2008, James Fee had a post called “ArcGIS Map Server Cache in Amazon S3” on his Spatially Adjusted site. The idea of using Simple Storage Service (S3), rather than a server, to store static map tiles is old news.
