lat/lon is a German company offering consulting and development in geospatial IT, with a focus on open source software for OGC standards. It supports open source projects such as xPlanBox and the OSGeo project deegree, which lat/lon began developing in 2000. deegree is open source software for spatial data infrastructures and geospatial web services, covering data access, visualisation, discovery and security, and built on OGC and ISO TC 211 standards. The package includes the OGC reference implementation of WMS, a fully compliant WFS, and components for CSW, WPS and WMTS.
lat/lon gesellschaft für raumbezogene Informationssysteme mbH has its address in Wachtberg, Germany. deegree is an OSGeo project that several organisations and individuals now maintain, not only lat/lon. Because the software is open source, a European organisation can install and operate it on its own infrastructure or with a provider of its choice. Data location and operation then stay under its own control, while lat/lon can provide consulting and custom development.