ArcGIS as “Cloud Bundle” on Amazon’s Cloud

May 21, 2010 17 Comments

ESRI has finally come out with a cloud based ArcGIS Server.  You can lease ArcGIS Server on Amazon’s EC2 for one year with ArcGIS Server, SQL Server 2008 Workgroup, ArcGIS Desktop (but only to administer ArcGIS Server) and one year of support.  Prices aren’t listed, but I’ve heard it isn’t that competitive to your existing licensing.  Plus don’t forget with that Large Windows Instance of EC2, you’ll spend $5,000 hosting the thing for that year minimum.

For those who already have ArcGIS Server licenses, here is your package.  For this you get everything listed on that webpage plus:

The ArcGIS for Amazon Jumpstart package is a consulting service. It includes one week of up to four (4) days of onsite consulting.

Hmm, guessing that most will still just roll your own rather than pay ESRI for consulting.  Nice option for those who need help, but onsite ESRI consulting won’t be cheap.

Back to the Cloud Bundle.  What is good about this?  First off I’m glad to see ESRI finally start to publicly address demand for ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2.  They’ve broken their traditional maintenance based approached to licensing which is something I think we are all very happy about and they’ve automated the process with an AMI ready to go.

ESRI sales team ready to hit the road and sell the cloud.

What is still lacking?  While this is a step into ArcGIS as SaaS, it still requires you to go through your local ESRI office.  This will mean that large ESRI customers will get great breaks and those who are smaller or new will pay list prices.  The cloud is supposed to bring equity, but the traditional sales model of ESRI plays favorites.  Windows only instance of this AMI is also problematic.  The cost of a large windows instance of EC2 is going to offset all the benefits of the a 1 year license.  Of course ESRI doesn’t support Fedora or CentOS so until they do most are probably going to not scale up ArcGIS in Amazon.

I see nothing about ESRI helping with backing up these Ec2 instances and how that is going to work.  These EC2 instances can crash (hello ArcGIS!) and just disappear.  If that happens you lose EVERYTHING.  Basically this is a GIS infrastructure play and it is up to the user of their AMI to handle this.  That said, one ArcGIS license isn’t enough to do redundancy (though maybe the terms allow this).  Basically you are paying to use a single, slow (compared to typical servers) hardware with no methods to back up your services.  YIKES!

That said, we were all lead to expect nothing on this until later this year so this means ESRI is addressing users concerns.  There is still lots of darkness on this such as does it include updates (would a 10.o users automatically get 10.1 when it comes out?) and service packs (I guess one could just apply them, but that puts the maintenance of the AMI on the user not ESRI).  I’m looking into this because I really want to run an ArcGIS Server on the Amazon cloud, but not pay for a typical license.  Plus actually having ESRI support for EC2 is probably worth it in the long run either way (this service or roll your own).  The ESRI UC should be very cloudy (yea I used a cloud pun).

Mix a little ESRI and cloud and who knows what you’ll get

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Licensing on the GeoWeb

April 12, 2009 40 Comments

The GeoWeb is easy, right?

The GeoWeb is easy, right?

OK, love or hate the term GeoWeb, it does reflect the reality of our workflows today.  We are taking our applications off of the desktop and running them on the web, we are combining data silos right inside the browser and we are giving tools to that used to be reserved for technicians on UNIX workstations to users via their mouse.  It is truly a new way of working, but I see it running directly in a wall.

Licensing

Here we are at the tip of the iceberg changing the world (maybe a self-serving statement), but we’ve got a chain around our necks limiting our potential.  Google and Microsoft’s (among others) APIs are sold the same way IBM sold software before there was the world wide web, large companies can cut great deals, smaller users are left paying full price because we don’t matter.  ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop and Server licensing doesn’t reflect how users are using the applications in the real world (sure, allowing editing on ArcGIS Server Standard instead of Advanced is a step, but it is just one in a long list of problems with the licensing model).  Don’t even get me started on Oracle’s licensing.  Arbitrary levels of licensing that have no real world basis are killing innovation and requiring consumers of the services to look elsewhere or limit what they can do with technology.  I’m not advocating abandoning any of these companies here because there are great business cases to use their software, but their customers are not able to continue business as usual.

Wont someone please think of the users?

Won't someone please think of the users?

Just last Friday, I was talking to a client who was paying for ArcInfo because one hour a month he needed a function that it handled.  The rest of the time ArcView was good enough for him.  This isn’t just limited to ESRI, most software companies sell software this way and users are expect to pick up the cost just to get some functionality that some committee, in a dark room in their software design center, determined that only “power users” would need is crazy.  Sure there are ways to get around most of these limitations using other software, but all these companies are doing is pushing their customers away.

So what do we need here?  Google offers their products as SaaS and so does Microsoft.  Why does this make sense for “Office” applications and not Geospatial software?  Now these efforts of course don’t replace Microsoft Office and that isn’t their mission (well at least Microsoft’s).  But what do they do is allow users to extend their collaboration further than the office conference room.  Geospatial software is well set up to take advantage of services.  Pay for what you use and spend the savings on tools that benefit the end users and not tools that you’d never need.

So I’m not exactly expecting a revolution here in the next year, but unless companies start thinking about the realities of how users are using their software or APIs, we are going to have to look elsewhere or create our own tools.  Given what the licensing costs these days, there is money to get that done.  Personally I’d rather just use an off the shelf solution and pass those savings on to my clients and get back to building great applications for them

The GeoMonkey only wants what is right...

The GeoMonkey only wants what is right

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Where is Metered Pricing for Internal Mapping Applications?

November 13, 2008 39 Comments

So I’ve got a (theoretical) simple internal website for a client that basically puts pushpins for their locations on a map. Since this is on their intranet we’ll have to pay approximately $10,000 to Google or Microsoft to license their products internally. This small company doesn’t have the kind of money (especially in this economy) to put down on such an application. Essentially spending $5-$10K before any coding has taken place is not going to get anywhere and the project is dropped. 

Why is it that both Google and Microsoft are stuck in archaic licensing agreements? The logical way to price these services is a metered service. Much like Amazon AWS works, you’ll pay for what you use (with per-session costs decreasing as usage goes up). It would be monitored so I could see what kind of traffic I’m generating with the service and I could be billed monthly via credit card. We’ve been using Amazon S3 and EC2 with great results and it is very easy to justify the low initial costs and still be able to scale to larger applications if warranted.

How do you get Scrooge McDuck to part with money to pay API licensing costs to Google or Microsoft?

How do you convince Scrooge McDuck to part with money to pay API licensing costs to Google or Microsoft?

The other problem is that if I’ve got to spend that kind of money, I’m going to be developing larger internal applications than I would externally. You can’t do a simple internal mashup if you have to pay large enterprise licensing costs. I was told by one potential client who wanted a Virtual Earth application that “For that price we might as well buy another ArcGIS Server license”. For someone to say that it is cheaper to roll out ArcGIS Server for a simple mashup really puts it all into perspective and if you are going to develop with ArcGIS Server, you’ll probably have a larger application than a “simple” Virtual Earth map.

So I’m pleading with Microsoft and Google to revisit their map API licensing and move toward more of an Amazon AWS type service that will help get their mapping tools into more places than today. Everyone wants a Google or Microsoft map on their intranet website, but the current licensing is killing projects before they can start.

The GeoMonkey is a huge supporter of Amazon Web Services

The GeoMonkey is a huge supporter of Amazon Web Services

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ESRI Changes Service Licensing

December 14, 2007 14 Comments

Announced earlier this month and talked about for at least a year (I think they mentioned this at the 2007 Dev Summit), ESRI is moving away from socket licensing to using the number of cores on the server.

Through November 30, 2007, ESRI licensed server software based primarily on the number of physical sockets on the server which are being utilized by CPU chips. These CPU chips can have 1 or more processing “cores,” each core providing additional computing power for the CPU chip. Licensing requirements and fees for ESRI server software are based on the combination of the number of utilized sockets on the server and the number of cores on each CPU chip.

To address recent changes in the server hardware markets, ESRI has adjusted the licensing and pricing model for ESRI server software to be based only on the number of cores on the server. This adjustment simplifies the process of determining the appropriate license requirements and license fees, especially for new hardware configurations that are continuously being introduced.

Now before you get all worked up that this will cost you more money…. DON’T. Your maintenance will not change because ESRI is adjusting the pricing model as well. It will mean you’ll have a much easier time determining your license and fees using the new chart provided by ESRI.

Filed under ArcGIS Image Server, ArcGIS Server, ArcIMS, ArcSDE, ESRI Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The ArcGIS Online Data Appliance

November 5, 2007 21 Comments

There has been some discussion on my blog about the ArcGIS Online Data Appliance. Most ESRI users already know what is on the thing because they have had access to the ArcGIS Online Beta.

The ArcGIS Appliance provides terabytes of pre-rendered U.S. nationwide and worldwide data that you can host on your own secure server. This data consists of 2D maps and 3D globes that are optimized for publishing with ArcGIS Server and includes worldwide imagery, street map, shaded relief, and elevation data.

So, does this excite anyone? Google of course has their own product and I know I’ve heard other companies getting ready to offer such products using ArcGIS Server and/or ArcGIS Image Server. Personally I have to think this will be a huge hit with companies that are tied to the ESRI stack (which is probably its target marketplace).

If you want to see the costs of this product, the online PDF is here.

Filed under ArcGIS Image Server, ArcGIS Server, ESRI, Google, Google Earth Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,