The need for improving the effectiveness and efficiency in organizations and provide insight required to reduce time, cost and risks of actions and decisions requires using a geographic context to information. I have been promoting the importance of what is called Location Intelligence for quite a few years, actually dating back to the early 90’s. I was involved in a strategy to place maps in our apps as part of a software portfolio that was focused on the science of decision support now referred to as performance management. This newly formed category of technology called Location Intelligence is focused on providing geographic information and applying location specific analytics along with the tools and methods to integrate them into management and business processes for everyone. I recently posed the question to every organization “Is Your Business Location Intelligence Competent”. The largest technology supplier in this segment is ESRI who for decades, actually 1969, has been advancing this agenda led by their President, Jack Dangermond. ESRI has taken what is called Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and advanced the science and technology along with creating a business and ecosystem of practitioners like SAS has done with analytics.

Recently ESRI decided to simplify and advance GIS and take a giant leap forward on fulfilling on the purpose of Location Intelligence and make it simpler for everyone to be able to use it. To do this, ESRI has developed a technology called ESRI MapIt which is software and an online service that embraces the Microsoft technology platform and tools including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and spatial data capabilities, Microsoft IIS, Microsoft Office Excel and the use of Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 for access and interactivity. ESRI has made it simple to access data in Microsoft spreadsheets and in their database for the simple purposes of making maps and business data come together in a simpler manner than ever before. The last time this happened was when Lotus and Microsoft showed how their spreadsheets and data could be mapped within a couple of clicks in the mid 90’s.

I like what ESRI has done to simplify the ability to access data and build interactive maps that can be easily accessed via Microsoft Sharepoint through MapIt. Even more interesting is that MapIt can use Microsof Bing Maps. This will help make mapping available for a range of simple to somewhat sophisticated needs across areas like sales, marketing, operations, customer and supply chain that I recently pointed out the importance of along with specific application needs that could range from emergency response to conducting trade area analysis. Just as important is ESRI MapIt fulfills on a key responsibility of business intelligence (BI) to provide information and insight from data across the enterprise and now across the Internet. Our benchmark research on Location Intelligence found that the integration with and support of Business Intelligence was at the top of the list for organizations today. As individuals or organizations become more sophisticated they can graduate into the main commercial product called ArcGIS that ESRI has invested decades of R&D to support and deployed across the world.

Interesting enough is that Microsoft who with their product called MapPoint has fallen behind in advancing the technology in many areas including usability and the simplification of accessing and integrating with their own Microsoft Office and SharePoint though they have an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server. In fact MapPoint has stagnated and not advanced to use an Internet based technology foundation and is limited in scope for the geographic data it can map let alone the interactivity now required to operate across the Internet and the web browser. This is easily seen by trying to find information about integration with MapPoint on these product pages. Clearly ESRI has found an opportunity to fill Microsoft own void of making it easier to use Microsoft technology to provide Location Intelligence and might want to consider embracing the technology further to get organizations to upgrade Microsoft products.

From my initial analysis of ESRI MapIt is that it is ready to address the needs of organizations and the Microsoft channel that needs to provide complimentary and useful technologies to their customers who are both dedicated to Microsoft technologies.  One of the great points is that it is easy to download and try along with the price of $4.5k per IIS server for as many users you need makes it cost effective for small and large organizations. I would hope to see support for direct integration within Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Windows Mobile in 2010 that will help make it pervasively used by organizations using Microsoft SharePoint. While every organization is not uniquely dedicated to Microsoft technology, almost all have the basic set of products that ESRI MapIt requires.  If you have not determined your strategy for providing maps on your data to meet a range of needs, you should look at ESRI MapIt and start advancing your location intelligence.

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Regards,

Mark Smith - CEO & EVP Research