ESRI/Microsoft Connections, Winter 2009

ESRI/Microsoft Connections brings you news about how ESRI and Microsoft deliver customer GIS-based solutions across the enterprise. If you know others who would like to subscribe, send them to www.esri.com/microsoftconnections. Additional ESRI electronic and print publications are also available.

In This Issue

• ESRI/Microsoft News
• ESRI Corporate Alliance News
• Product News
• GIS in Action
• ESRI in the News
• Marketing Opportunities

ESRI/Microsoft News

ESRI and Microsoft Team Up to Support Reforestation Efforts in Kenya
GIS industry leader ESRI has joined forces with Microsoft Corporation to support the longtime efforts of the Kenya-based Green Belt Movement. The movement is internationally known for its successful reforestation activities, planting more than 30 million trees since its founding in 1977 by Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

Ghana Project Leverages GIS to Alleviate Poverty
Recognizing that landownership helps poor people take the first crucial steps out of poverty, a pilot land titling project using ESRI software and Microsoft SQL Server Express offers a promise of hope in the African nation of Ghana. International Land Systems, Inc. (ILS), a project participant and ESRI business partner, spearheaded the pilot program. As the pilot draws to a close, the participants are confident that they have successfully developed a low-cost and extremely powerful land titling and cadastral solution—built with off-the-shelf components—that can be handed over to the Ghana Ministry of Lands for use in quickly and inexpensively providing legal titles to the people of Ghana, regardless of their location or income level.

Microsoft Technology Critical to Success of Innovative Enterprise Solutions for the Public Sector
New World Systems is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that provides software solutions for public safety and public administration organizations. In 2008, New World launched several new solutions built on the leading Microsoft .NET Framework and expanded the use of Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) to enhance the performance, flexibility, and scalability of all its applications. The .NET Framework has allowed New World's customers to achieve remarkable levels of integration with everyday applications—including third-party line-of-business applications and Microsoft Office—to streamline daily tasks, increase efficiency, and achieve paperless work environments. Among other enhancements, New World has strengthened mission-critical GIS mapping capabilities within its Aegis Public Safety Software by embedding ESRI technology into dispatch, records management, and mobile computing solutions.

Podcast: Installing ArcSDE for Microsoft SQL Server Express [MP3]
The first in a series, this podcast discusses the installation process of ArcSDE technology for Microsoft SQL Server Express licensed for ArcGIS Desktop or ArcGIS Server Workgroup. Listeners can follow along by reading the podcast transcript [PDF].

Webinar: Virtual Earth at Work in State and Local Government
The Virtual Earth platform is a critical component of the Microsoft geospatial story, enabling public-sector agencies to serve up data in a manner that allows users to better visualize, understand, and ultimately act on it in a more timely fashion while simultaneously cutting costs and delivering clear value to their constituencies. Richard A. Wade, team lead of the Texas Natural Resources Information System (TNRIS), presents a case study on how the adoption of Virtual Earth solved some pressing business and technological challenges and shares the results, insights, and lessons learned. Registration is required.

Microsoft Gold Sponsor at the 2009 ESRI Federal User Conference
Federal leaders, decision makers, and GIS professionals gathered February 18–20, 2009, in Washington, D.C., for the largest geospatial conference dedicated to federal government agencies. Microsoft staff demonstrated the ease of integrating Microsoft Virtual Earth data in ArcGIS applications as well as the strength of complementary solutions including Visual Studio, SharePoint, and SQL Server. Microsoft’s support clearly demonstrates the importance of the ESRI/Microsoft relationship in the federal space.

Microsoft to Sponsor 2009 ESRI Developer Summit
ESRI would like to thank Microsoft for its sponsorship of this annual event dedicated to GIS, mapping, and spatial developers. The event will take place March 23–26 at the Wyndham Hotel and Palm Springs Convention Center in Palm Springs, California.

Community Center: Visit Microsoft in the Community Center to have your Microsoft technology questions answered and find out what's to come in future releases.

At the Tuesday evening Technology Spotlight, Microsoft will discuss the past, present, and future of the Web development environment including an in-depth look at Silverlight, Expression Studio, and Visual Studio.

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ESRI Corporate Alliance News

Dashboard Integration of Xcelsius, GIS Mapping, and Reporting
APOS Systems, a leading provider of extensions to the Business Objects platform and an ESRI Authorized Business Partner, announced a beta program for its new Dashboard Builder support for the APOS Integration Kit for ESRI GIS solution. This new enhancement will allow ESRI GIS maps to interact with Business Objects reports and Xcelsius models in a unified dashboard view, extending location intelligence into analytics and reports.

Capturx Digital Technology and ArcGIS Accelerate GIS Projects
Three projects are part of Australia's regional transportation plan and form one of the country's largest road and bus line networks. A paper and pen solution by ESRI hardware partner Capturx was chosen to build out preliminary project maps and environmental, traffic, and management plans within ArcGIS for the Airport Link, Northern Busway (Windsor to Kedron), and Airport Drive Connection projects. Ten thousand people will work on the design, construction, and delivery of this integrated transport solution.

Bakersfield, California, Relies on Laserfiche/ESRI Implementation for Enterprise GIS
As the fastest-growing city in the United States with a population of more than 250,000, Bakersfield was experiencing an explosion of records. Finding records quickly was a significant challenge, but a Laserfiche implementation significantly contributed to eliminating paper and simplifying information retrieval. An ESRI ArcGIS implementation was purchased at about the same time to meet the city’s need to provide GIS services to various city departments. Almost all the work the city does is related to GIS, making ArcGIS a cornerstone of its IT infrastructure. The ESRI integration took only about two months to complete, with city IT staff members performing all the work themselves. Currently, Bakersfield Public Works is using the ESRI/Laserfiche integration, with the fire, police, and building departments all planning to use it in the near future.

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Product News

ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight to be Released at the ESRI Developer Summit
The beta release of the new Silverlight API will coincide with the March 23 – 25 ESRI DevSummit in Palm Springs, California. This new API allows application developers to combine GIS-based Web services from ArcGIS Server with other Web content and display it in fast and expressive mapping applications that can be deployed over the Web. While it is in public beta release, developers will be able to download the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight from the ArcGIS Server Resource Center.

Release of ArcGIS 9.3.1
ArcGIS 9.3.1 will improve the performance of dynamic map publishing and increase geographic information sharing. The software will also include enhanced support for Java developers and feature an easy installation that will allow users to upgrade to ArcGIS 9.3.1 without having to uninstall ArcGIS 9.3. ArcGIS 9.3.1 is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2009. Learn more.

ESRI's New Address Coder 9.3 Software Improves Address Geocoding
Geocoding becomes much simpler with the new release of Address Coder 9.3. Marketers, direct mail managers, and any organization that must manage large U.S. address lists can use ESRI's new Address Coder to segment and target addresses with latitude-longitude coordinates, Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) codes, demographic data, and ESRI's Tapestry Segmentation codes.

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GIS in Action

GIS-Geography in Action: The Works of GIS Professionals and Evolving GIS Technology
In this article, ESRI President Jack Dangermond shares his perspective on geographic information system's history, present trends, and future opportunities. Dangermond discusses ways that current GIS professionals are accelerating the creation and use of geographic knowledge and its application to nearly every problem confronting society. He also examines how GIS technical advancement and adoption are accelerating and how these trends are changing everything.

GIS for Managers—No-Cost Online Training Seminar
While GIS has been a popular technology historically in land planning, site selection, and resource management, GIS software has been underutilized in facilities management. Incorporating a GIS into your existing IT infrastructure can increase the overall performance metrics of an organization. This complimentary 60-minute seminar will present case studies of companies and government agencies that have successfully implemented GIS to meet business goals and give managers, executives, and other decision makers an understanding of the business value of GIS.

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ESRI in the News

Newspaper Projects a $600,000 Savings with ArcLogistics
The Star-Tribune newspaper of the Minnesota cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul uses fewer vans and drives fewer miles since routing deliveries of papers using ESRI's ArcLogistics software. Labor costs have also fallen. Read the article. Listen to the podcast What's New in ArcLogistics 9.3 [MP3]. Take the free training seminar Introduction to ArcLogistics 9.3.

Keynote from DHL Express Europe to Kick Off 2009 ESRI Business GIS Summit
ESRI is pleased to announce that Henrik Dahlin of DHL Express Europe will keynote the ESRI Business GIS Summit being held May 4-6, 2009, at the Westin Tabor Center in Denver, Colorado. Dahlin will discuss how GIS technology has helped the international company improve its bottom-line results, boost customer service ratings, and reduce its impact on the environment. Business professionals and industry leaders come together at this annual event to explore the models and strategies that ensure success.

3-GIS Launches Network Express
Network Express is a browser-based engineering solution that provides fully operational editing and viewing features. Built on ESRI's ArcGIS Server technology, Network Express allows users to plan, design, and manage their asset data within a work order environment utilizing the Internet. It runs in Adobe Flash Player and is built with Adobe Flex, giving a modern user experience that declutters the working environment and provides a function-driven workflow for faster documentation and design.

Knoxville Area Experiences "Sea-Change" in Migrating to a Webcentric GIS
In the 1980s, the city of Knoxville, Tennessee; Knoxville County; and the Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) envisioned a GIS that would enable the maintenance and sharing of complex datasets. The ideal GIS would tie all these organizations together and give them access to a common digital basemap, thus minimizing the data duplication process, streamlining updates, and better informing decision makers. But that was decades before all the GIS, networking, and Web tools of today. KGIS went live in 1985 and is considered the first multiparticipant municipal GIS. This article reveals the system's historical importance and how it continues to stay vibrant and innovative.

Sidwell to Develop GIS for Iowa's Page County
In its goal to establish an easily maintainable internal land records mapping and workflow management system that provides accurate GIS analysis, Page County, Iowa, has selected the Sidwell Company. Sidwell, an ESRI business partner, will design, develop, and build a contiguous digital mapping system delivered as an ESRI personal geodatabase that replaces the existing tax parcel maps. Parcel Builder, Sidwell's ArcGIS technology-compliant software suite, will be installed and integrated with existing systems, resulting in much greater efficiency and accuracy of the county's land records.

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Marketing Opportunities

Measuring Up II
ESRI is now collecting case studies to include in a new ESRI Press book. Measuring Up II, the sequel to Measuring Up: The Business Case for GIS, will offer companies and government agencies the chance to tell how they implemented GIS solutions to meet business goals and how their successes with this technology can be measured through

• Saving money and time
• Increasing efficiency, accuracy, productivity, communication, and collaboration
• Generating revenue
• Supporting decision making
• Aiding budget development
• Building information bases
• Managing resources

If you would like to submit an article for consideration, e-mail bhinthorne@esri.com.

Network on the Green in Palm Springs, California
As part of the annual ESRI Worldwide Business Partner Conference, you are invited to participate in the Jim Christoffersen Golf Classic, which will be held on Saturday, March 21, at Cimarron Golf Resort. The tournament will have a four-player scramble format and a shotgun start at 12:15 p.m.

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