I attended the May 24, 2012 ESRI Business Partner Webinar, which discussed consulting service opportunities for business partners deploying ArcGIS Online. The webinar went over the new possibilities with ArcGIS Online to reach customers who currently use ArcGIS Desktop but because of a lack of budget or expertise, did not use ArcGIS Server to take full advantage of sharing or web publishing opportunities. With ArcGIS online most of the financial and technical hurdles of the past have been eliminated.
ArcGIS Online should also open up opportunities with new clients, who have never used geographic content in their business practices before. It will now be possible for companies and agencies with limited budgets and geospatial knowledge to easily create maps with an excel spreadsheet or with GPX data. ArcGIS Online will also enable mobile data collection using phones and other mobile devices. The maps created on ArcGIS Online can be shared internally over the internet through a customized web page, improving and enhancing an organization’s business processes.
ESRI Business Partners are able to determine an organization’s existing web presence and data sets and help determine the best use of ArcGIS Online for the client. Within ArcGIS Online, there is a lot of room for creating a customized look and feel, determining available and default basemaps, creating map galleries, creating different user groups and setting the security level for the site. ArcGIS Online Specialists can also provide training and can administer online accounts for customers.
For information and training videos on ArcGIS Online, go to the ArcGIS Online Help Center.
