Volume 3, Number 2

June 2007

Interview of Jack Dangermond, President, ESRI

By Dr. Nitin Tripathi, Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Geoinformatics, on June 19, 2007

            Jack Dangermond has 38 years of experience in geographic information system (GIS) software, a technology for authoring, serving, and sharing location-based information for better decision making. He is the founder and president of ESRI, the world's fourth largest privately held software company. Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Redlands, California, ESRI is widely recognized as the technical and market leader in GIS, pioneering innovative solutions for working with spatial data on the desktop, across the enterprise, in the field, and on the Web.

            ESRI has the largest GIS software installation base in the world with more than one million users in more than 300,000 organizations representing government; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); academia; and industries such as utilities, health care, transportation, telecommunications, homeland security, retail, and agriculture. Dangermond is recognized not only as a pioneer in spatial analysis methods but also as one of the most influential people in GIS. He actively manages ESRI and is closely connected to projects, clients, and the company vision. He takes a leadership role in national and global initiatives to facilitate standards for data access and sharing across agencies and organizations. He is personally committed to applying GIS methods for environmental stewardship and sustainable communities.

Nitin:   ESRI is identified as a company where GIS was nurtured. Did you perceive that GIS would attain this stature when you first initiated it?

Jack:

            Yes and no. No, I did not think that we would get this large from a business and an IT perspective. Yes, I envisioned even 40 years ago that the geographic approach would become a fundamental framework for how people would approach problem solving. GIS is now accelerating the adoption of this approach because the technology is faster and cheaper and providing further reach with its integration with the Internet. When we first started, it was on mainframe computers, which were several million times slower and more expensive than today's current platform. Later, we moved to minicomputers, which provided a multi-user environment for about $1 million. Later came the UNIX workstation and PC platform and the client/server environment. Today, you can do computing thousands of times faster on a computer the size of your finger. The fusion of these devices (running GIS software) with the Web gives much further reach of the geographic approach, and I think it's just the beginning.

Nitin:   ESRI has powerful solutions for GIS. It has been coming out with new tools. What is going to be the most exciting development coming from ESRI in the near future?

Jack:

            Generally speaking, our engineering process is to incrementally release software that is responsive to emerging platform technology, responds to the needs of our users and their workflows, and includes the creative ideas from our engineering team. This is a complex process, and we do it incrementally every 18 months.

            This summer, we are releasing a complete cadastre editing and management system that integrates survey measurements and GIS. At the beginning of next year, we will introduce ArcGIS 9.3, which will advance our field in many ways. First, it will allow our server to be mashed-up with other Web servers, such as other user and consumer Web sites, including geoservices such as those provided by Google and Microsoft. This will allow our users to expose their professional knowledge, datasets, and applications. This will support greater sharing of their knowledge with the world. ArcGIS 9.3 will provide advancements in spatial modeling, image analysis capability, and cartographic production. Of particular interest will be the ArcGIS Server ability to manage, exploit, and visualize image data. Specifically, ArcGIS Server will become the platform of choice for enterprise image management. At 9.3, ArcGIS will support more on-the-fly image enhancement, supporting ortho-rectification, color mosaicing, georeferencing, pan sharpening, etc. All these functions have been implemented in such a way that imagery simply becomes a fundamental part of the ArcGIS environment. Finally, at 9.3, the ArcGIS Server platform will make considerable advancement regarding its ability to support IT enterprise environments.

            Historically, GIS has been used within focused areas of many markets: oil and gas, forestry, cadastre, land-use planning, water resources, etc. We are now seeing the ESRI platform deployment change to support an enterprise environment using our enterprise server technology. As a result, many of the large IT companies have formed relationships with ESRI to help us. Specifically, we have strong partnerships with SAP, SAS, IBM, Microsoft, and others, which will help us reach an even larger presence in the enterprise market. So, we have great confidence there.

Nitin:   There is a feeling that ESRI software is expensive for educational institutions and common people in developing countries. Is there any plan to lower the prices so that people can find it affordable?

Jack:

            This is a misleading notion. ESRI has historically provided academic pricing around the world which makes GIS software affordable. ESRI has donated millions of dollars of software to organizations within developing countries, particularly NGOs and academic institutions. ESRI also has low-priced student versions with more than 100,000 students around the globe benefiting.

For the past five years, ESRI has worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to donate $50 million to the 1,000 most impoverished cities in the world. Also, in the conservation community, ESRI supports a grant program for NGOs with more than 5,000 organizations benefiting from our software; training; data; and, in some cases, scholarships.

Nitin:   GIS users find it very difficult to adopt a standard database design. Those organizations affiliated with Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI), National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), and other organizations at global/local levels are involved in this issue. But, the common user seems to be far away from these initiatives. Will it be worthwhile for ESRI to conceptualize a standard database design system and plug-ins for conversion?

Jack:

            ESRI has developed a series of standard data models for each subject area or industry such as utilities, forestry, water, land records, topography, and oil and gas. These are freely available on the ESRI Web site and are regularly downloaded by users so they can implement these models for their projects. We have worked very hard with national and international standards committees to integrate their standards for specific focused areas such as geology, soils, and water, for data models, which are in common practice.

Nitin:   Many premier organizations involved in the GIS software industry are making their products as open source. Examples: AutoCAD MapGuide and ILWIS. Will ESRI open some of its products?

Jack:

            ESRI has adopted an open systems, closed source software model. Our software products are not built on open source software models, either from an engineering or business model perspective. However, we highly regard the open source community. This year, we are releasing full support for Postgres SQL DBMS and PostGIS as part of our products. We support the open source platforms and have engineered our products to incorporate or use open source as a platform (e.g., Linux, Apache Web server, Python, and GDAL raster library). We also are a founding member of the 52°N Open Source Consortium.

Nitin:   Are we going to have ESRI software on mobile in the near future?

Jack:

            Yesterday (June 18, 2007, in the opening ceremony of the ESRI International User Conference), I presented four different mobile solutions from ESRI. ArcPad is the world's leading mobile GIS platform. Recently, ArcPad was selected by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for the 2010 census with more than 400,000 deployments. We also have hosted Web service solutions as well as many business partners who have developed custom mobile solutions based on our desktop products. Last year, we released ArcGIS Mobile, which is based on Microsoft's Smart Client technology and runs on PDAs, mobile phones, and laptops. This is part of ArcGIS Server and represents a small footprint, which can be easily customized for different applications.

            Our mobile devices can also be customized to support any location-based services. We believe this platform will ultimately extend far beyond any platform available in ArcGIS today—connecting virtually all mobile workers with the ArcGIS enterprise server. In focused areas (e.g., professional survey data capturing), ESRI is working closely with GPS vendors (especially Trimble) that are building an integrated field server system closely integrated with our geodatabase technology.

Nitin:   How do you see the future of the GIS industry in the next decade?

Jack:

            My forecast is that it will continue growing as during the last decade. In revenue terms, ESRI has been growing 10–15 percent annually for the last 25 years. And we expect the same kind of growth in the future. From a development perspective (i.e., number of users), ESRI will grow more rapidly as our enterprise server technology is more widely accepted and adopted. It will allow our users to share their data more extensively.

Nitin:   What are the job prospects for young graduates in geoinformatics?

Jack:

            Good to very good. People that have degrees or specialize in GIS, in particular, and geoinformatics will tend to get much higher wages and have more opportunities. There are many reasons for this. GIS graduates tend to understand how to integrate geospatial knowledge, and they have the skills to do GIS projects and build systems. Both will be increasingly needed by our governments in the future. There is a shortage of people who have practical experience; here, I refer to experience in application areas such as geoinformatics within health, surveying, forestry, and land-use planning. Therefore, I emphasize the combination of multiple degrees or joint degrees. This is the main issue and often a main handicap in initiating GIS projects. We need people who know both a specific or scientific field and GIS technology.

Nitin:   Data is the main issue and often a handicap for initiating the GIS project. Is there any plan for ESRI to be the data provider in the near future?

Jack:

            ESRI is already one of the largest geospatial data providers in the world. We are leading in geodemographic information in the United States and provide more than $1 million worth of basemaps and imagery data free as part of our standard products. Similarly, we have put much of this data on the Web through ArcGIS Online.

ArcGIS Online is a new and free library geoweb service for our users. We have basemaps of the world at small scale and in greater detail for some specific regions of the world.