GIS field may require different kind of software such as GIS (Geographical Information Systems), CAD (Computer Aided Design) and DBMS (Database Management Systems). CAD are often used for cartography and DBMS permit to store the data exploited by GIS.

Software:

GIS	Clark University (Idrisi)
	ER Mapper (ER Mapper)
	Esri (ArcGIS - ArcInfo)
	Esri (ArcGIS - Arc View)
	GeoConcept (GeoConcept)
	Intergraph (Geomedia)
	MapInfo (MapInfo)
	Manifold System GIS (Manifold)
	Baylor University (Grass)
	Star GIS (Star)
	Univ. of Hawaii - Soest (GMT)
Marine Cartography	Caris (Caris)
	Majic Instinct (Olex, Nautilus, GeoMovie)
CAD	Autodesk (Autocad)
	Bentley (Microstation)
DBMS	Informix (Informix)
	Microsoft (SQL Server)
	Microsoft (Access)
	Oracle (Oracle)
	Sybase (Sybase IQ)
Formats
Translations	Safe  (FME)