Esri, an international supplier of geographic information system (GIS) software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications, has several offerings that use Microsoft Azure that they want to use Microsoft GTM Services to promote, Angelides said. “We have seven Esri Azure-based offerings available to the market this year, and with our wins beginning to accelerate, we are very eager to increase our activity level to continue building momentum and growth generated by the Microsoft Go-To-Market Services team."
Jeff Peters, who is the director of global business development in the national government sector at Esri, said his organization’s partnership with Microsoft has helped on the technology side as well. “Collaborating with the Microsoft sales teams continues to accelerate the productivity of our users. Instead of investing in computing resources and spending time on IT infrastructure, Microsoft’s expertise helps our users quickly deploy the cloud and devote more time to solving real world problems,” Peters said. “Ultimately, this is one of the ways we can continue to meet the variety of demands of our users as we help them scale, ensure reliable performance, and reduce infrastructure costs.”
Peters continued: “Working with Microsoft has helped Esri eliminate the large investment in hardware and software equipment for our users. Not only is this important from a cost savings perspective, but Microsoft Azure processing has also improved the production capabilities, as it did with the Chesapeake Conservancy project.”
Earlier this year, the Chesapeake Conservancy, a non-profit organization based in Annapolis, Maryland, pioneered the production of the Chesapeake Bay High-Resolution Land Cover Project, one of the nation’s largest, high-resolution land cover datasets. The dataset, which was built with Esri software that uses Microsoft Azure cloud technology, features one-meter resolution land cover data for approximately 100,000 square miles of land in and surrounding the Chesapeake Bay watershed. This new classification provides 900 times the amount of information as conventional 30-meter resolution land cover data.
According to Peters, the joint effort between Esri and Microsoft on the Chesapeake Conservancy project is just one example of how the two companies can collaborate. “Our sales teams understand the value of partner collaboration and our customers expect this,” he said. “Our teams have accelerated the progress of opportunities by coordinated joint meetings with CIOs and business owners in support of the customer mission.”