Esri today rolled out an ambitious cloud offering for government and enterprise customers that allows users to create data-driven maps and map services without ArcGIS servers or desktop software.

ArcGIS Online organizational subscriptions, in beta since December, also provide:

• Tools for application development using geospatial data
• An open API for integration with software such as Microsoft Office, Salesforce and Cognos
• Mapping of data within Excel as long as that data has a street address or city name (geocoding will be automatic)
• Cataloguing of GIS assets, making such data easier to find (and less likely to be duplicated by others in an organization who don’t know it’s there)
• Private sharing among internal groups
• Maps that display across numerous mobile devices as well as in Web browsers
• And hosting on either public or private cloud infrastructure.

“One way to describe it — and here’s a big sentence — is that ArcGIS Online is a mapping platform, a new geospatial enterprise platform but especially focusing in on mapping,” said Esri founder and President Jack Dangermond in a phone interview with Computerworld (see related story). “It has other services in there, like geocoding services across the enterprise or spatial analysis services that can be deployed across the enterprise, but the basic thing that most people recognize it for is that it has really cool maps.

Esri Rolls Out ArcGIS Map Services For The Cloud

Demand is increasing for web-based applications that give your colleagues and the public the ability to obtain the results of geospatial analysis online.

You can provide these types of applications using geoprocessing services authored using ArcGIS for Desktop and published with ArcGIS for Server from Esri. 

During this seminar which will take place on Thursday, June 21, 2012, you will find out how to use the new ArcGIS 10.1 for Desktop and ArcGIS 10.1 for Server releases to author and publish geoprocessing services and use those services in web applications. 

There will be three offerings at: 9:00 am, 11:00 am, and 3:00 pm PDT (U.S. & Canada).

Live Training Seminar, How To Author And Publish Geoprocessing Services

ArcGIS Online has been updated with a number of new features and enhancements. This is a major release, with a focus on capabilities that enable ArcGIS Online to be used as a cloud-based, collaborative content management system for maps, apps, data, and other geospatial information in your organization.

The Mapping Platform for Your Organization

Create interactive maps and apps and share them with the rest of your organization. Realize new opportunities and gain insight into your data. Do this quickly and easily with nothing to install or setup.

View: What’s New

A Fresh New Look For ArcGIS Online, Organisations Are Now Live

With the release of a new version, many of you are probably wondering what is new in ArcGIS 10.1. Here are a few key features for raster and image data, that you may be interested in. 

These features and enhancements will hopefully help you with your raster and imagery data.

• New\improved support for data sources
• Imagery is easier to use and looks better by default
• New\improved tools and capabilities
• Improved georeferencing experience
• Many improvements to editing and managing a mosaic dataset
• Better seamlines
• More accurate footprints
• An analyzer to examine you mosaic dataset and your image service
• Server-side processing
• Clients can edit an image service with the proper setup and permissions
• Image services can be cached
• More rendering options for mosaic datasets and image services
• REST enhancements to help with your raster data

View: What’s New 

What’s New For Raster And Image Data In ArcGIS 10.1