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Ulm steps into this newly created role to drive Microsoft's Virtual Earth platform, an integrated set of powerful online mapping and search services delivering a variety of business, government and consumer applications that enable people to learn about, discover and explore a specific location.

"With our rapid expansion and ongoing investments in innovation driven by customer feedback, our Virtual Earth platform becomes an even more powerful tool, providing a wide variety of applications," said Harvey Sanchez, online services strategy manager, Microsoft.

The new Virtual Earth platform provides a wide range of supported capabilities, new map detail and imagery, and feature enhancements that allow businesses to deliver highly visual and immersive Web experiences to better meet business goals such as increasing site traffic, building community and strengthening customer relationships.

Organisations are also using mapping internally in order to display data in a much more visually rich way to help make faster and better decisions on issues such as asset and fleet management, customer service improvement and increased product sales, thus enhancing business intelligence to become location intelligence.

According to Microsoft, the new position "recognises the significance Microsoft places on delivering powerful platform services for location based solutions to improve business insight and customer relationships".