Abstract
ArcGIS Online for Organizations: Deploying Enterprise-Wide GIS in the Cloud
Track: Technology
Authors: Michael Beavers
Before the introduction of Cloud-Based GIS, surveying professionals, field crews, CAD technicians, administrative staff and their clients lacked tools to build, analyze, visualize and share spatial information within their Enterprises. With the advent of web-based spatial information systems, it is now possible to build, maintain and distribute large geographic datasets securely to multiple users across local and wide-area networks.
Notwithstanding these technological advances, a number of surveyors rooted in analog tradition continue to practice their trade and conduct business using methods that do not embrace spatial information sharing via cloud-based GIS. As the trend towards managing spatial infrastructure and sharing geographic information in the cloud becomes an industry standard, organizations that embrace this approach will realize its value.
The AcGIS Online for Organizations site that Frontier Surveying Company maintains is a secure, scalable, planning and visualization portal. It is a "field-to-finish" warehouse of survey-grade data. It also integrates a variety of data from sources outside our organization including survey data from other companies as well as the gallery of basemaps available within the application. It is as a depository where multiple users simultaneously access, store, add and edit geographic data.
Past firewalls, across wide-area networks and beyond physical and virtual boundaries, ArcGIS Online for Organizations is evolving into the platform where Frontier extends geographic knowledge to a diverse set of users. It enables our company to meet the growing demand for our time and services by making geographic information available on-call via self-service portals to customers through managed cloud infrastructure.