Are ArcGIS Online and Portal redundant

Question

We are a small unit of 2 people in our Central IT group providing GIS infrastructure to our agency with about 300 users of which 60 are doing GIS as their primary jobs.  We have an ArcGIS Online account for Organizations and ArcGIS Server but have been resisting spinning up a version of Portal internally.

My question is, are ArcGIS Online and Portal redundant?  Since we have ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Server is there really a need for Portal?

Thanks

AhmedOsman1 · Answer

There are other ways to extend your work with ArcGIS server without Portal, that is when you run in usage limitations, You can check, usually be open to implement multiple solutions, there is no one solution that fits all, portal. web app builder and others, now I suggest to go hybrid and expose your arcgis server to external libraries to be more open and more standard compliant you can try

ESRI GeoPortal Server Esri Geoportal Server | Open Source Metadata Management

GeoNode www.geonode.org + cartoview http://www.cartoview.net

terriajs TerriaJS - Geospatial catalog exploration library  you can combine any data source and create your catalogs via services or manually, this viewer is probably the richest in terms of geospatial content you can view in your map

PaulDavidson1 · Answer

Some Pros for Portal:

*   Use Portal if you have sensitive data that you need to keep behind your firewalls.
*   You are concerned about credits and want to host your own geoprocessing services (routing, etc...)
*   Portal can also let you setup an IWA/SSO (single sign on) environment. AGOL lets you do OAuth/SAML but not IWA (as far as i know anyway)
*   Portal allows you to deal with limited named users in a better way than AGOL.  You can publish maps and web apps that are for "Everyone" but because it's behind your firewall, everyone means only authenticated users.
* Federation with ArcGIS Server, lets you move your security model over to Portals identity based one vs. Server's community (or role base) one
* Supports 3D hosted services
* Supports large data services
* You control the update schedule.  This might matter to some places where riots occur when software is updated.

Some Cons for Portal:

* Setting up and maintaining Portal is not a trivial task.  Tim is spot on here.
* It requires a number of resources to setup a full system:

(Portal, AGS, Data Store and IIS/Web Adaptors.)

* AGOL is instantly scalable to you (not your headache if you suddenly have a million hits.)
* Typically, updates to the software start with AGOL and then migrate to Portal.

e.g. I'm waiting for 10.5 because it offers some functionality in Portal  that is now available in AGOL.  Supposedly, this is switching though to where new functionality will first be released with Portal?

If you do stand up Portal, highly recommend first taking Esri's fairly new course:  "Deploying Portal for ArcGIS" .

DerekLaw · Answer

Hi Randy,

Just to add onto what the others have posted, you may want to watch this UC tech session video,

Portal for ArcGIS: An Introduction | Esri Video

Between 8 mins to 22:10 mins, the different Web GIS deployment patterns are discussed and near the end we review some reasons why you would choose ArcGIS Online vs. Portal for ArcGIS and vice-versa.

Hope this helps,