The foray into BIM is a fools errand until ESRI has something to put on the table that’s even remotely as capable as the tools that are already in place.

There’s much noise and commotion about it, but in the end it’s just a silly idea that has as much future as PC ArcInfo ever did.

ESRI is trying to get into Autodesk’s space. Otherwise, what is the whole ‘GeoDesign’ summit about? Jack wants GIS as a design tool, not just an analysis tool. Design is what Autodesk is all about. In my opinion, design and analysis is what used to separate the CAD and GIS worlds. BIM is mixing these worlds as never before and ESRI is trying not to loose ground and even expand upon it.

As far as Google Maps/Earth goes, think of the Long Tail. GM/E is the head of the tail. ESRI is the long tail. Google will support what 90% of what people will want to do with a map – place finding and transportation routing. ESRI and others will live in the rest of the 10% and do everything else. And to do so, ESRI will need much better industrial-strength applications, with more arcane and specialist orientated tools. ESRI should leave the ‘dots on the map’ and ‘find my closest Walmart’ to Google. It’s a big geospatial world, and that 10% ain’t that small. In the end, its usually the specialists that make the money.

OSM? They’re a content non-company…consumable streets for anyone.

Google? they’ve taken off the top of the market (everyone wants to see the content those nerds are making in the back room) and succeeded because they’ve taken control of the viewer. They did it by launching the largest sales demo pilot ever in the history of geospatial – Google Earth. Showed lots and lots and lots of people how cool maps really are, without all the hugger-mugger and confabulated BS attached about ‘taking a geographic approach’ to the access. They just put it out there, and probably spent more on GE in the last five years than Jack has made in the last 40. Jack would have done something similar if he had the coin, but he doesn’t (158th on the Forbes 400 notwithstanding).

As long as ESRI owned the full chain from creation to visualization, we got things like ArcIMS, because web services took away sales of desktops. ESRI’s always been more interested in putting full features on everyone’s desk (so they can experience the wonder of the geographic approach and be able to run complex analyses locally) than they have in letting control of the data and the process slip away from their platform. Remember the core truth about owning any computer market…it’s about the data. The more data in your format, the more people need your tools to access the content. Jack was masterful about this 12+ years ago when he told Chris Smith to go give away ESRI products to every State/Local GIS department.

Google came along 5+ years ago and sliced off 80% of what ESRI’s always thought were their potential users. They did it by offering a stupidly-simple way to visualize the content that’s ben locked up in the planning department. And now that Google owns the key, the door and the front hall of Jack’s house, they’re adding the seven most useful geo-functions. They’ll never own the whole house, because the professionals need Redlands and San Rafael to the other 20% of the heavy lifting. But Jack will be downstairs in the walk-out basement, looking wistfully at the back yard and wondering what’s going on upstairs.

For ESRI, over the past four years they’ve been asking themselves what’s next, and how can we counter the hordes at the door?

And their answer has been in making the tools less arcane and specialist-oriented and more end-user accessibile. Well, when you go that way, you lose the deep functions the core needs to be successful on the ‘big’ projects. And with compromised capabilities, the key influencers are migrating away to build hybrid solutions that actually *work* in an industrial setting. So ESRI’s move to COM and desktop ubiquity has actually diluted their key strength – the ability to handle big datasets and big projects. They will, of course, deny, deny, deny that this is so. But the folks who were there 15 years ago know it’s true.

Thus the bunker mentality at ESRI. The meme is right on the money.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/54/rich-list-09_Jack-Dangermond_B4V2.html

Thank goodness for open source projects like Geoserver!

With something like – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b56vwZ_oclw
Where Wyatt is Jack, the bartender is Us, and the Dealer is Google/AutoDesk/OSM/OrYourFavorateEsriboggieman

I just wish I could produce it was well as the ESRI Downfall…
Watch the video with this in mind and you’ll get the idea

BTW – If you haven’t used command line ArcInfo, get out of the room!

1. They are human (well most of them)
2. They use the software themselves
3. Many have used Arc since the days of Plot and Edit so they know what we’ve gone through.