I’ve gotten a couple emails from folks asking me what I thought about “Mapserver Enterprise” (The quotes signify that the will change soon). Well my company has been looking at integrating Mapserver into our products to replace ArcIMS in some cases, but with the announcement of Autodesk entering the open source community, we’ve begun to look at their product also. As a consultant, we always look for ways to help out clients and if Mapserver or Mapguide works for the project, then we’ll use it.

In the 6 months since we’ve initiated the Mapserver development, I’ve been very impressed with the community built around it and wished there was something like this for other GIS development environments. Tech support delays at ESRI has gotten to the point were we almost never bother anymore. I remember the days when you’d call and be able to talk to a support rep on that one phone call. Now it can be days before anyone gets back to you. The last couple incidents I remember were all resolved before ESRI called us back to help and this in spite of the ESRI support website being of no help whatsoever. It is tough being an ESRI developer sometimes.

Update – I think we’ve beaten this horse to death so lets lay off of the “ESRI Support Sucks” comments. If you do have good suggestions, though please do post them and I’m sure ESRI will read them. I have been contacted by ESRI so they are listening and reading these comments. It could be a good opportunity to talk directly with ESRI support management.**