The Plenary Session At The ESRI Business Partner Conference 2010

The ESRI Business Partner Conference 2010 kicked off this morning in Palm Springs and since then there has been a steady amount of information flowing across the social media pipe. http://geo.geek.nz/events/using-social-media…

Lots of the demonstrations and content of this years Plenary was similar to that shown of at the ESRI International User Conference 2009. As the technology has been evolving, demonstrations were more in depth showcasing some of the newer functionality we have been hearing about.

Many individuals have been covering the Plenary Session via social media so I thought I would summarise some of what was showcased.

As per tradition Jack kicked off the ESRI Business Partner Conference 2010. His talked covered a number of different topics addressing the vast amount of business partners from all around the world. Jack explained VGI, GeoDesign, Cloud Computing before moving on to talk about how these apply to some of the new enhancements coming at ArcGIS 10. These concepts were also covered at the ESRI International User Conference 2009 and a write up about this can be found here: http://geo.geek.nz/events/the…

A big focus of this years ESRI Business Partner Conference 2010 is Cloud Computing. The ArcGIS 10 Cloud Strategy was showcased with much talk around how ESRI are moving forward to support cloud computing with some of the enhancements coming with the latest version.

Earlier this year at the ESRI Federal User Conference 2010, ESRI announced a new an exciting relationship with Amazon Web Services. Information about this is here: http://geo.geek.nz/esri/esri-announces… More information around this was made available during the Plenary Session.

Running ArcGIS 10 on the Amazon Web Services Cloud works just like any other platform

This is a very important message. ArcGIS Server will operate in the exact same way as if you had it deployed in your environment but you will be able to take advantage of a powerful hosted platform from Amazon. Management and administration will be as if the server is running in your server room.

Not everything will be cloud based

Cloud Computing can be extremely powerful for the end user. ESRI is essentially allowing users to take advantage of the Cloud with their new Amazon relationship. Not everything will be cloud based. This is something to remember. ArcGIS Desktop is still a very important tool for many users. You will still need ArcGIS Desktop to author your map documents and manage certain data. The move to the cloud for ArcGIS Server is a means of scaling to take advantage of resources which you might not have internally. Its also a means of being able to share data more efficiently and be able to collaborate with other users easily.

Later this year users will be able to rent an ArcGIS Server on Amazon

Jack announced this at the Plenary. This will adopt a rent a server model where you will be able to utilise ArcGIS Server for a certain period and only pay for the usage around this. I guess licensing and costing around this is still being worked out.

Chris Capelli summed up Cloud Computing with a great statement:

The world is not becoming cloudy overnight

There is a lot of talk around Cloud Computing from many of the industry leaders and as this new concept begins sweep through the industry we have to remember that this is not something that happens in an instant. It will take quite a while before many users embrace Cloud Computing. I guess something of more importance is that ESRI is and will be support Cloud Computing heavily with the ArcGIS 10 and future releases.

There were a number of demonstrations around some of what was talked about.

An Amazon Web Services deplyoment was demonstrated. The demonstration showed how to deploy an ArcGIS Server into an Amazon Web Service instance in just four minutes.

ArcGIS Online was demonstrated along with a new Application Store. Similar to the concept of Apples Application Store, the ArcGIS Online Application Store will allow users to share their packages, data, services, models, templates.

ArcGIS Explorer Online was demonstrated. This is a new online version of ArcGIS Explorer. This is a version built in Silverlight which will allow users to take advantage of a powerful web based viewer.

arcgis.com was announced and talked about. arcgis.com is a complete GIS that folds a number of online tools into one portal.

A complete ArcGIS implementation in the cloud

I am thinking about this similar to Adobe’s acrobat.com. Adobe has had many web based services available for a while now. They have brought them together under the banner of acrobat.com and it looks like ESRI is following suite with arcgis.com

ArcGIS 10 was demonstrated. We have seen and heard a lot of some of the new features. I had a big write up here: http://geo.geek.nz/events/… from the ESRI International User Conference 2009. Some of the popular features touched on were around data editing and imagery.

The new Flex Viewer was demonstrated. Apparently this is shaping up nicely and comes with a slick UI along with many widgets for users to take advantage of.

Business Analyst Online was demonstrated. This has been upgraded to a new Silverlight interface. This was also demonstrated showing integration with ArcLogistics Online. I am very keen to hear more about ArcLogistics Online as this is an amazing tool and seeing it in the online world could extend its powerful capabilities.

Customisation to ArcGIS Desktop was demonstrated. Showing users how easy it is to create add-ons at ArcGIS 10.

ArcGIS Mobile was demonstrated for both Windows Mobile and the iPhone. The iPhone Application is coming together nicely with support for both vector and raster layers with the ability to “mash” these up on through the application. The ArcGIS Mobile touch application coming as part of ArcGIS 10 is also looking very slick.

It’s been an exciting morning hearing about some of the great new concepts, enhancements and other features coming. Some last points to take away and be aware of:

• ESRI will be launching http://ideas.esri.com which will allow users to share their ideas.
• ArcGIS 10 will be distributed online. This will be similar to MSDN allowing users to download ISO. This is awesome as there is now waiting for the DVD to be shipped. For those that require the DVD’s they can be requested from ESRI.
• ArcGIS 10 Pre-Release will be made available for download to all BPC and beta users next week
• ArcGIS 10 Final download is scheduled for June 2010.

Thanks to James and Dave for most of this information but also thanks to all the others out there that have been feedback back information from the event. The ESRI Developer Summit 2010 kicks off tomorrow and I will be collating information and updating when I can.