ESRI’s Mobile Platform of Choice
December 16, 2008 25 Comments
Jack Dangermond was interviewed on CRBonline this week and there was one comment that caught my eye. When Jack commented on ArcLogistics on mobile, the interviewer asked him this:
Q. Does it run on the iPhone/BlackBerry Storm/Windows Mobile/Google Android? If not, when will it?
A. We’ve standardised on Windows Mobile as a platform that gives us a level of device independence. We are looking at other platforms, but see Windows Mobile as a primary IT platform for professionals.
Yikes, I guess we and our clients won’t be running ArcGIS on their mobile devices in the coming year.
Maxwell Smart uses ArcGIS Server Mobile on the Windows Mobile Platform.
Of course I could be over analyzing Jack’s comments like others are.
About James Fee
Kremlinology has always been an under-appreciated art.
As a veteran armchair Kremlinologist I have always maintained that ESRI’s close alignment with Microsoft coincided too neatly with the arrival of David Maguire in Redlands. Now that Dr. Maguire is about to take the Pro-Vice-Chancellor position at Birmingham City University, UK, I wonder if his departure from Redlands will validate my original supposition.
http://apb.directionsmag.com/archives/5117-ESRIs-Maguire-to-Take-Academic-Position.html
Don’t count on it – the press release says “He will continue to work for ESRI as Chief Science Advisor…”.
But I reckon we’ll probably see more money flowing from the UK university education budget into the coffers of ESRI and Microsoft…
I don’t know. The announcement sounds too similar to a politician announcing he will step down “to spend more time with his family.” It’s never about his family.
winmo on the htc fuze whoops my old iphone (i loved my bb tho).
W.r.t the iPhone, I feel the cell tower triangulation is just not accurate enough, for any serious data collection (given I have a 1st gen iPhone myself). I have not tried the iPhone 3G, but let me know if its WAY more accurate.
What would you want to do with GIS on a mobile device like the iPhone, apart from finding POIs and routing? The built in Maps app already provides this functionality.
3rd Gen iPhone GPS is pretty good- when it works. Sometimes it mysteriously gives up and defaults back to cell tower triangulation and even when it works it takes a few seconds to narrow down where you really are at. You could never really use the iPhone for data collection if you needed < 4 meter accuracy (if you wait long enough it triangulates to a circle that looks about 4 meters in size).
When it comes to running some logistics code on a phone, it seems that you would want a ruggedized phone, which the iPhone certainly isn’t. Also the touch UI isn’t really usable when you are driving because you have to look at the screen to use the UI (this creates obvious liability issues should the driver get into an accident).
Doug, sure you wouldn’t use a consumer phone for engineer work.
The GeoWeb 2.0 is much bigger than that, and if we want to put information in front of the people who can make decisions (and not the field tech with the ruggedized Trimble), we need to use clients that decision makers carry.
So no Windows Mobile. The iPhone and the Blackberry (and probably Android one day) is where these decisions are going to be made.
I agree, the original quote was about logistics. Maybe I am an old fart but it seems to me that decisions about logistics will be made in front of a PC running Excel and a GIS.
BTW I like the new site look.
There may be a state/local government influence here. Blackberries run into sunshine law problems (in some, not all states) because of how their email is handled. Sprint will hand out windows mobile phones for nearly free to governments while AT&T hits the up for full retail on iPhones. End result? State and local governments run on windows mobile.
“When it comes to running some logistics code on a phone, it seems that you would want a ruggedized phone, which the iPhone certainly isn’t.”
I’d love to afford a “Ruggedized phone”. Although I would not find a ruggedized phone as ‘handy’.
“Also the touch UI isn’t really usable when you are driving because you have to look at the screen to use the UI (this creates obvious liability issues should the driver get into an accident).”
The same could be said for any Touch GPS device, and for that matter, should we be “playing” with tools while we are driving? Call me old fashioned, but I prefer drivers to be drivers, not data collectors and actively analyzing anything beyond the focus of driving.
Isn’t the comment that ESRI doesn’t worry about open-source more interesting? Sure, there’s the Oracle/Mysql model to consider, but there’s also the IIS/Apache model to look at. What is your opinion about the ability of OSS projects to compete with his ‘non-consumer-facing’ analysis applications?
Open Source competes very well with proprietary back end servers. This is probably why you see ESRI supporting RedHat, Apache and PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Personally I don’t want ESRI to concern themselves with “competing” against open source. I’d just rather have them focused on their customers. That is all users want, not religious open source vs closed silo arguments. I don’t have the time for them and I’d assume most others don’t either.
Silos are bad not matter if the are close source or open source. Go with what best matches your needs and you’ll succeed most of the time.
I have attempted to use an iPhone several times and I have come away extremely unimpressed. It is more of an annoyance in the IT space because it snuck in through the back door. In the way as a VP or someone saw it, bought it, then impressed on IT to support it, not the other way around. that’s how they got into our shop. Same way with blackberry, though blackberry makes you go out and get BES because it can’t directly hook into exchange….and people think SDE middleware is bad.
WinMo is used for more mission critical applications. You are more apt to see medical devices running WinMo before you will blackberry or iPhone. ESRI appreciates this stability which is why they have standardized it. If you want some slapped together “web 2.0″ app, go buy it off of app store for 99 cents for your iphone.
JW, if the VP needs to make decisions, why limit his ability to work with data? Mission critical is one thing, but keeping the information a couple rungs down the org chart from decision makers hurts productivity, work flows and keeps organizations from being nimble.
Everyone’s organization is different JW, but I’ve had many people ask about iPhone and BlackBerry support for ArcGIS Server. My response is always the same, “nope”. They move on because WM is irrelevant to them as much as it is to your and your VP who carries his personal iPhone into the organization. If ESRI is going to ignore decision makers, we’ll just use other APIs to get the information to them.
The VP (& most other decision makers) will almost never understand the data, they are more likely to oversimplify and jump to conclusions. How could upper management, several steps removed from any of the nuances, make informed decisions. Most data is best summarized by analysts that know the real estate. Do we really want to enable micro-managers, and give them even more distractions during meetings (& driving). The first false thought a VP would have is “I guess I don’t need them anymore.” All that being said, if I were in the VP role, I’d want to see everything from my BlackBerry as well.
no, the Iphone is a “me too” device. neither my VP, or most people around him, are getting them because they deliver data and decisions better, they get them because it is “cool”. That is it. WM is not “cool” but it works. ESRI sees that. It is also ridiculously simple to deploy an app, or even update an app, by pushing it out via Exchange.
I say this with a WM device in my right hand, but the WM platform is falling apart. Sales are down, developers are leaving, and enterprise customers are moving toward the iPhone (mine is testing to replace our crappy MotoQ devices with iPhone).
I’m not sure why ESRI can’t continue to support WM devices and support J2ME/iPhone/Android as well. I’d like to think they would be ahead of the wave on this, instead of behind.
JW: Did you see Atanas Entchev’s link to this story about ArcGIS on the Blackberry? ( http://www.freeance.com/mobile )
No idea if it really works, of course, but at least the pricing structure looks to be right in line with ESRI…
My link was meant to be sarcastic (“Run ArcGIS Server on a Storm? Come on, get real!”), but it didn’t work as such, apparently.
In my years of geomatics works I’ve noticed strong predisposition towards the use of all things Microsoft. While I do not begrudge this one bit, I have found it quite strange that these same people had quickly dismissed Google Earth on it’s onset as a curious viewer.
While Windows Mobile does have it’s strengths of which i’ll argue stability is not one of them, the GIS community should not overlook the strengths of alternative platforms. The iPhone has many great strengths, beyond it’s shear computing ability, UI, and standardized hardware. In many ways, the iPhone/iPod platform has a greater capability for “mission critical applications” because of its many constants. The same can be said for Blackberry, which has proven itself as a powerful communication device.
Symbian has proven itself very capable and popular on the Nokia smartphones.
Android is another platform to keep a very close eye on, with the coming of “Chrome” as new emerging web platform.
As a community of GIS practitioners/developers, we should not be closing our efforts to specific platforms, but opening our minds the opportunity of using new technological tools.
mars
Breaking News: ESRI Goes With Microsoft!
Also in this bulletin: Dog Bites Man Shock!
My “shock” is that in 2009 they can’t say more than “we are looking at it”.
It is like the quote from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
oh and BTW:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/samsung-blackjack-ii-tops-consumer-reports-list-of-best-smartph/
I don’t make this stuff up, there is a reason why WM is the platform of choice.
Choice by who? I’ve never worked for a company that has ever chosen WM as a platform. I think in this case JW, YMMV.
You can concentrate on WM and continue doing whatever you wish, I and others will focus helping those visual information using whatever tools these choose.