SpotOn and Esri GIS: The right choice
Posted by Dave Kerr on Fri, May 27, 2011
When SpotOn made its decision to partner with Esri for GIS capabilities, some in the BI world wondered what the heck we were thinking. I mean, after all, Google is today's mapping solution, right? Why would we not take that route?
Well, a recent endorsement from Gartner is yet another validation we made the right choice. This study, entitled MarketScope for Energy and Utility Geographic Information Systems, ranks Esri as "Strong Positive". Download the study and see what it has to say about GIS in these markets. Search the document for "Google" and see how many times it's mentioned.
And talk about serendipity in terms of timing! This study comes out just before we launch a couple of new online demonstrations, aimed squarely at geospatial BI for... you guessed it... Utilities (water management) and Energy (Oil and Gas). Combining BI data (and remember, the "B" in BI stands for Business) with GIS data can be a huge win for businesses seeking to optimize their performance. It's business measures linked with geospatial data, and it brings clarity to business data in reports.
We know what GIS professionals know: GIS is about so much more than maps. It's largely about data -- just like BI! Google is about so many great things, but it is not first and foremost about data.
- dk