Think of SaaS vs fat licenses as Mass transport vs Cars

If mass transit were available wherever you wanted to go, most folks would be unlikely to buy cars. But since it ain’t – those folks buy cars to get from A to B, and for ‘potential’ mobility.

Now, since the infrastructure of ‘the internets’ is available pretty much anywhere, perhaps it’s only a matter of time until folks give up their resource-intensive tools and start working off mass services.

Or not. ;^)

And yes you ALL are still going to this years touchy “I love GIS” UC.

Me to ESRI Rep.
“I don’t want free passes to your propaganda show aka UC, can I get a better price instead?”

Question:
What makes for an expert in the field? It isn’t because you jumped some dopey hoops and became an GISP and attended every UC in the past 10 years. And the fact that you worked at ESRI tech support does not make you and expert either…

No – what makes you and expert in the field is the fact that you have made a lot of mistakes with many different products. This fact means you can steer clients away from making those same mistakes and into a product that they will truly use and appreciate.

And Yes sometimes it’s not a mapping product (Yes I said it – SOMETIMES IT’S NOT A MAPPING PRODUCT)

We all need to go on a ESRI diet.

Boycott this years UC and spent it learning something non-ESRI instead.

When you’re subservient to your user base, and a revenue stream, changing course is often institutionally impractical (or impossible, if the exec. mgmt are happy with the status quo).

I believe the biggest impediment to price change and adjusted business models is not ESRI in the geospatial trades. I think the barrier is inside the ESRI channel. Implementations companies rely on ‘hard-to-program-means-more-hours-sold’ for a time-sold revenue curve. Perversely, a change to allow ‘by-the-drink’ licensing and SaaS resales effectively breaks the time-sold stream.

A while ago, a couple companies sprung up to do just this – offer ESRI tools through an ASP model. This was back in the day when the internet was still ‘kewl’. The folks at ESRI allowed it to happen, and watched the results. After watching adoption skyrocket at the edges of their customer influence, and seeing the traction the approach was getting, the Redlands folks changed their reseller license pronto. They stepped on that approach fast – and didn’t replace it with anything meaningful – so as not to cannibalize the support streams for themselves and their partners.

ESRI really, really, really likes the renewal stream from all those ELA’s scattered across the community, too.

We can wish, but the Gorilla must eat.

But there are also some drawbacks:
*) The cartographic possibilities of Manifold are quite limited.
*) Linear referencing with measures is not supported
*) 3D-display features are not really satisfactory
*) I am missing full datum transformation support

For my specific needs this means, that I need ArcInfo AND Manifold and the situation still remains quite unsatisfactory.