ESRI

ESRI also refers to the Economic and Social Research Institute in Ireland.

ESRI was founded as Environmental Systems Research Institute in 1969 as a privately held consulting firm that specialized in land use analysis projects. The worldwide headquarters of ESRI are anchored in a multicampus environment in Redlands, California.

With annual sales of more than $610 million, ESRI remains a world leader in the Geographic Information System (GIS) software industry. Their business involves the development and support of GIS software, with customers including small businesses, large corporations, and governments at all levels.

ESRI has offices throughout the United States; a business partner program with more than 2,000 developers, consultants, resellers, and data providers and a network of more than 80 international distributors with more than a million users [http://www.esri.com/company/about/facts.html in more than 200 countries.

Ownership

Jack and Laura Dangermond founded ESRI in 1969. Jack Dangermond is the current president of ESRI.

Pronunciation of company name

According to the company, ESRI is not pronounced as a word (es-ri) but as distinct letters (ee, ess, aar, I) similar to IBM, SAP and other software companies with an acronym based name. It is thought within the GIS circles, and even joked that 'old' users prefer E-S-R-I, while novice users use the 'ez-ree' pronunciation. Employees of ESRI still pronounce the name in both fashions (typically depending on the audience).

Products

ESRI uses the name, ArcGIS to refer to its suite of GIS software products, which operate on desktop, server, and mobile platforms. ArcGIS also includes developer products and web services.

Desktop GIS

ESRI's current desktop GIS suite is version 9.1, with the basic suite including ArcView. ArcGIS Desktop software products allow you to author, analyze, map, manage, share, and publish geographic information. ArcView is currently available in Unix and Windows variants. At added cost, ArcEditor expands the desktop capabilities to allow more extensive data editing and manipulation. At the high-end, is ArcInfo which provides full, advanced analysis and data management capabilities. ArcReader a basic freeware application for viewing GIS data. Version 9.2 is due out towards the end of 2006. To add some confusion in the names of products, ArcMap is the name of the application that most users of version 9.x run to get their desktop package, which comes in three licence types (ArcView, AcrEditor and ArcInfo).

ArcGIS Desktop Extensions are available, including Spatial Analyst which allows raster analysis, and 3D Analyst which allows terrain mapping and analysis. Other more specialized extensions are available from ESRI and third-parties, for specific GIS needs.

ESRI's original products were the UNIX desktop product ArcView GIS and a command line product Arc/INFO. Over time both of those products were offered in Windows versions and ArcView as a Macintosh product. The names ArcView and ArcInfo are now used to name different levels of licensing in ArcGIS.

Server GIS

Server GIS products allow GIS functionality and data to be deployed from a central environment. ArcIMS (Internet Mapping Server) provides browser based access to GIS. ArcSDE (Spatial Database Engine) is used as an RDBMS connector for other ESRI software to store and retrieve GIS data within a commercially available RDBMS. Currently ArcSDE can be used with Oracle, DB2, Informix and Microsoft SQL Server databases. ArcGIS Server is an internet application service, used to extend the functionality of ArcGIS Desktop software to a browser based environment.

Other server based products include GIS Portal Toolkit, ESRI Image Server and Tracking Server as well as several others.

Developer GIS

Developer GIS products allow you to build custom desktop or server GIS applications or embed GIS functionality in existing applications. These focused solutions can then be easily deployed throughout an organization. (Product: ESRI Developer Network or EDN)

Mobile GIS

ArcGIS technology can be deployed on a range of mobile systems from lightweight devices to PDAs, laptops, and Tablet PCs. (Products: ArcPad Mobile ArcGIS Desktop Systems)

GIS web services

GIS Web services give a diverse user community access to geospatial content and capabilities. Public Services is free to developers building non-commercial, non-governmental applications. Commercial Services provides complete access to all available data. (Products: ArcWeb Services—Commercial Services , ArcWeb Services—Public Services)

Lightweight viewers

Lightweight GIS data viewers provide a quick and easy way to view geographic data. (Products: ArcReader, ArcExplorer (and the UK version MapExplorer), ArcGIS Explorer)

Primary Competitors

While web service-based mapping such as Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, and viewer programs such as Google Earth have been widely popular with the general public, these are not direct competitors to ESRI. GIS software, including ArcGIS, provide extensive professional-level analytical and data management capabilities, whereas these web services are aimed at the consumer-level only offer imagery of air photos, road data and basic route planning information. The products do not offer the analysis capabilities, image interpretation and data management offered in GIS and remote sensing software packages. The demand remains strong for enterprise analytical and data management capabilities that are provided by ESRI's full-blown GIS software packages. ESRI does offer mainly for-fee web service-based mapping called ArcWeb Services and provides a no-cost subset of the functionality and data for personal, noncommercial, and nongovernmental development projects.

External links

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