How to convince I.T. to buy computers that can handle ArcGIS Pro?
My department's computers are up for replacement this year. So I've asked my I.T. department to buy us computers that meet the ArcGIS Pro Optimal requirements: ArcGIS Pro 3.1 system requirements.
To my surprise, my I.T. department say they can't afford to buy computers that meet those requirements. They actually say they'll be replacing in kind -- meaning we'll get the same specs as we already have, which doesn't even meet the Recommended requirements, let alone the Optimal requirements. Screenshot.
To be honest, if that's the case, I'm not really looking forward to my next few years of using ArcGIS Pro.
I actually don't end up doing much mapping in Pro. I normally just test individual queries or add a table/small FC to the map to do testing. I don't do anything that has heavy graphics requirements; the enterprise geodatabase does most of the heavy lifting.
Even still, I end up waiting for Pro to load more often than I'd like. It's little things like:
- Geoprocessing tools are slow to load/initialize. (I'm not talking about running the tool; I'm talking about opening the tool.)
- Right-clicking a layer in the Contents pane. The right-click items are greyed-out initially and take a few seconds to load.
- Using the Explore tool on a small FC. Takes a few seconds to load.
I can't say I really understand why simple things like that take a few seconds to load. I can understand slow performance when running complex analysis or maps. But not so much when opening a GP tool, etc.
But that's beyond my control.
What I want to ask is:
Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Have you had any luck convincing your organizations to buy high-performance computers for using ArcGIS Pro? If so, how? For example, I've tried saying, "We spend all this money on software, it would only make sense to have hardware that can run it properly." But that hasn't worked so far.
Any tips or lessons learned?
