on Jul 19, 2014Much of this came from Dan Oleary and Andrew Turner but it was something I have been wanting to post. It answers questions we often get from customers when they ask how is the ArcGIS Platform different. What is the ArcGIS Platform and why should you care?
I often refer to this as the ArcGIS Platform Preamble.
Modern, mission critical information technology is a composition of many components into a consistent, user oriented whole.
Esri designed the ArcGIS platform as a cohesive architecture of open, interoperable technologies that provide mission ready, deployable, secure and adaptable solutions that solve mission objectives and challenges. Allowing users to operate within their existing workflows while providing a foundation to extend new applications and custom development at any level of the system architecture through open application programming interfaces as well as open-source code components.
Engineered around the principles of Structured Design and loose coupling, the ArcGIS platform enables users and developers to quickly adapt to emerging situations and changing needs. By enabling user and programmatic interaction through open standards-based interfaces the integrity and flexibility of a complex system is maintained. Our design and engineering approaches used throughout ArcGIS provide end users and developers the freedom to explore new requirements while ensuring reliable and consistent support to ongoing operations.
If you take the time to really understand Structured Design, what it is to be Open (beyond standards) and why cohesiveness matters you will see the art of what the folks in Core have built. (yes, I'm biased).
-Jeff
Yes, agreed with you, Jeff ,
ESRI ArcGIS should be treated as one of major geospatial solution platforms, which can be designed as a GIS infrastructure, especially, in larger organizations.
With ArcGIS platform in operation, companies with geospatial solution users can integrate and manage ‘all kinds’ of geospatial data (vector, network, 3D, raster, stereo-pair, oblique, panoramas, LiDAR clouds, etc.) from different solution vendors for different industries (especially, natural resources and engineering) into ‘secure’ enterprise IT ‘Cloud’ environment; and also allow all-level IT developers and engineers/geoscientists free & open to use this platform for their specific needs…
However, it is still challenging for ESRI ArcGIS platform to meet the above requirements. For example, how to integrate larger 3D ‘plant’ models like PDS from Microstation and Intergraph (http://www.intergraph.com/ppm/3dmv.aspx )? How to manage special raster (stereo-pair, oblique, panoramas) and its associated 3D models? …