ArcGIS Server in the Cloud

DEWright_CA

With the power of Portal in the Cloud (i.e. arcgis.com) it is about time to put the full power of AGS there. There are many places where customers need to do real GeoProcessing and having the ability to take the power of ArcPy and AGS would extend the platform so much further.

Right now; you can do Feature-Layer level functions which happen in the cloud instance of DataStore; but that doesn't touch the capabilities or complexities of real Enterprise Applications.

The flexibility of being able to push layers from ArcCatalog or Pro to a Cloud interface for a eGDB, then have a hosted interface where GeoProcessing scripts/tools could be pushed in a secure/hosted manner to then support the on-demand/surge processes that many need but ArcGIS.com currently can't provide.

ThomasEdghill · ‎06-06-2018

Thank you for submitting this Idea. There are currently a couple of existing options which customers can take if they wanted to deploy ArcGIS Enterprise in a cloud platform. I recommend taking a look at our documentation, which covers different options for deployment using AWS or Azure. There are also Esri Managed Cloud Services which helps to make deploying ArcGIS Enterprise in the cloud a quick and hassle-free process.

DEWright_CA · ‎06-06-2018

But those take you away from the totally hosted platform which is what my Idea is pushing. You can use your own AWS/Azure/Google VMs to host Portal, so is that a preffered path away from ArcGIS.com? No; ESRI is pushing very much the "Full Stack" approach; but their own path in hosted services are not "Full Stack" and that is limiting.

ThomasEdghill · ‎06-06-2018

Thanks for your response, David. Allow me to rewind a moment and make sure we're on the same page here.

I brought up ArcGIS Enterprise deployment in the cloud because this also includes ArcGIS Server, which can be engaged with in the same way that ArcGIS Server would if installed on a physical server machine. Users can opt to install just ArcGIS Server in AWS/Azure, and work with it much like a "hosted" version of ArcGIS Server - though this is still done on a per-customer basis.

Am I now correct that you are looking for Esri to provide their own hosted version of ArcGIS Server for customers to have user accounts associated with, which they can use to publish GIS Services to the web from?

If this is the case, I'd love to know some more about your desired use cases with such a solution. What kinds of workflows would you like to achieve with a "Hosted" ArcGIS Server?

DEWright_CA · ‎06-06-2018

Yes, I think that is the next logical step; ESRI having AGS as well as the currently available Portal available. I know in my case we do a lot of things that are pretty intensive geoprocessing that currently require dedicated machines (either local VMs or cloud VMs) that have AGS installed. Currently ESRI doesn't have or support a surge model for pricing, only short-terms.

Currently I can upload a block of data to AGOL and that gets stored in a DataStore instance, and I can run very basic functions from that Portal-Like interface. If I needed a more deep workflow or more tightly automated process like you can do with your own published tools with AGS, that can be run ad-hoc; you can't.

The ability to have AGS running and licensed in such as way that would reflect the AGOL surge model has many benefits.