Esri Chosen by Microsoft as its GIS Service for Enterprise Users

Redlands, California—September 26, 2016—Esri, the world leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, is collaborating with Microsoft Corp. on two new offerings leveraging Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Azure. This collaboration makes the power of geospatial analytics available to a much broader audience than ever before.

Esri's GIS platform, ArcGIS, will be integrated into Power BI (Business Intelligence), a set of business analytics tools, which enables its enterprise users to create dashboards, reports, and data visualizations through a cloud-based service. Power BI, which has more than five million subscribers, will be able to leverage integrated data and geospatial analytics capabilities from ArcGIS, including interactive basemaps, US demographics, and secure access to organizational data.

"ArcGIS geoenables Power BI with some of the world's leading spatial analytics," said Dirk Gorter, Esri director of product management. "We're excited to give Power BI users access to data and enhanced map visualizations so that they can tell compelling stories using spatial and nonspatial data. More and more, this location-based insight is becoming an important source of intelligence for the business."

In addition, Esri's premier professional desktop application, ArcGIS Pro, can take advantage of Microsoft's Azure cloud platform in a desktop as a service (DaaS) configuration, part of a growing collection of integrated cloud services.

Joint users of Esri and Microsoft's Azure cloud platform will now also enjoy all the capabilities of ArcGIS Pro on Azure's virtual desktop. ArcGIS Pro as a service on Azure enables GIS users to visualize, edit, and analyze geographic data in both 2D and 3D, as well as share their work with others. This development is especially important to ArcGIS Desktop implementations with extremely intensive graphics performance requirements.

"Microsoft Power BI is committed to developing high-touch business relationships that result in value for Power BI users," said John Doyle, director, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Corp. "The ArcGIS Maps for Power BI solution will provide Esri's vast experience with geospatial analytics to all Power BI users for their analysis and data visualization needs. When armed with a strong geographic understanding, Power BI users can make informed location-based business insights for everything from allocating resources to the best places to start a new business."

This innovative collaboration was announced at Microsoft's Ignite Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, which kicked off Monday, September 26, and continues until Friday, September 30.

Learn more about the collaboration between Esri and Microsoft.