For the Irish

Republic of Ireland

Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...

 think tank

Think tank

A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...

, see Economic and Social Research Institute

Economic and Social Research Institute

The Economic and Social Research Institute is a think tank in Dublin, Ireland. Its research focuses on Ireland's economic and social development in order to inform policy-making and societal understanding....

.

Esri (icon) is a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System

Geographic Information System

A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...

 (GIS) software and geodatabase

Geodatabase

A geodatabase is a spatial database designed to store, query, and manipulate geographic information and spatial data of low dimensionality. It is a specialized type of spatial database often with optimizations for 2 and 3 dimensions, raster data and Euclidean distance.Within a spatial database,...

 management applications. The headquarters of Esri is in Redlands, California

Redlands, California

Redlands is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 68,747, up from 63,591 at the 2000 census. The city is located east of downtown San Bernardino.- History :...

.

The company was founded as Environmental Systems Research Institute in 1969 as a land-use consulting firm. Esri products (particularly ArcGIS Desktop) have one-third of the global market share. In 2002 Esri had approximately a 30 percent share of the GIS software market worldwide, more than any other vendor. Other sources estimate that about seventy percent of the current GIS users make use of Esri products.

It has 10 regional offices in the U.S. and a network of 80 international distributors with about a million users in 200 countries. Esri has 2,500 employees in the U.S., and is still privately-held by the founders. In 2006 revenues were about $660 million.

They host an annual International User's Conference

ESRI International User Conference

Produced by the Environmental Systems Research Institute , the Esri International User Conference is the world's largest event dedicated to geographic information system technology. It is held annually in the United States, usually for one week in July at the San Diego Convention Center in San...

, which was first held on the Redlands campus in 1981 with 16 attendees. More recently, the User's Conference has been held in San Diego for the past 10 years. An estimated 14,500 worldwide users attended in 2007.

Ownership

Jack

Jack Dangermond

Jack Dangermond is an American business executive and environmental scientist. In 1969, he co-founded with his wife Laura the Environmental Systems Research Institute , a privately-held Geographic Information Systems software company...

 and Laura Dangermond founded Esri in 1969. Jack Dangermond is the current president of Esri.

Pronunciation of company name

According to the company, Esri is pronounced as a word, 'ez-ree'.

Some distributors outside of the USA such as Australia market themselves with the 'ess-ree' pronunciation followed by the country name.

Products

Esri uses the name ArcGIS

ArcGIS

ArcGIS is a suite consisting of a group of geographic information system software products produced by Esri.ArcGIS is a system for working with maps and geographic information...

 to refer to its suite of GIS software products, which operate on desktop, server, and mobile platforms. ArcGIS also includes developer products and web services. In a general sense, the term GIS describes any information system

Information systems

Information Systems is an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study...

 that integrates, stores, edits, analyzes, shares and displays geographic

Georeference

To georeference something means to define its existence in physical space. That is, establishing its location in terms of map projections or coordinate systems. The term is used both when establishing the relation between raster or vector images and coordinates, and when determining the spatial...

 information for informing decision making

Decision making

Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...

. The term GIS-Centric, however, has been specifically defined as the use of the Esri

ESRI

Esri is a software development and services company providing Geographic Information System software and geodatabase management applications. The headquarters of Esri is in Redlands, California....

 ArcGIS geodatabase as the asset/feature data repository central to Computerized Maintenance Management Systems

Computerized Maintenance Management System

Computerized maintenance management system is also known as enterprise asset management and computerized maintenance management information system ....

 (CMMS) as a part of Enterprise Asset Management

Enterprise Asset Management

Enterprise asset management means the whole life optimal management of the physical assets of an organization to maximize value. It covers such things as the design, construction, commissioning, operations, maintenance and decommissioning/replacement of plant, equipment and facilities...

 and analytical software systems. GIS-centric certification criteria has been specifically defined by NAGCS, the National Association of GIS-Centric Solutions. http://www.nagcs.org/index.asp .

Desktop GIS

As of September 2010 Esri's current desktop GIS suite is version 10.0. ArcGIS Desktop software products allow users to author, analyze, map, manage, share, and publish geographic information.
ArcGIS Desktop ships in three levels of licensing: ArcView

ArcView

ArcView 3.x was a geographic information system software product produced by ESRI.-History:ArcView started as a graphical program for spatial data and maps made using ESRI's other software products. Over time more and more functionality was added to ArcView and it became a real GIS program capable...

, ArcEditor

ArcEditor

ArcEditor is the midlevel software suite designed for advanced editing of spatial data published in the proprietary Esri format. It is part of the ArcGIS product. It provides tools for the creation of map and spatial data used in Geospatial Information Systems...

 and ArcInfo

ArcInfo

ArcInfo is a full-featured geographic information system produced by Esri, and is the highest level of licensing in the ArcGIS Desktop product line. It was originally a command-line based system...

. ArcView provides a robust set of GIS capabilities suitable for many GIS applications. ArcEditor, at added cost, expands the desktop capabilities to allow more extensive data editing and manipulation, including server geodatabase

Geodatabase

A geodatabase is a spatial database designed to store, query, and manipulate geographic information and spatial data of low dimensionality. It is a specialized type of spatial database often with optimizations for 2 and 3 dimensions, raster data and Euclidean distance.Within a spatial database,...

 editing. ArcInfo

ArcInfo

ArcInfo is a full-featured geographic information system produced by Esri, and is the highest level of licensing in the ArcGIS Desktop product line. It was originally a command-line based system...

 is at the high end and provides full, advanced analysis and data management capabilities, including geostatistical

Geostatistics

Geostatistics is a branch of statistics focusing on spatial or spatiotemporal datasets. Developed originally to predict probability distributions of ore grades for mining operations, it is currently applied in diverse disciplines including petroleum geology, hydrogeology, hydrology, meteorology,...

 and topological

Geospatial topology

Geospatial topology studies the rules concerning the relationships between the points, lines, and polygons that represent the features of a geographic region. For example, where two polygons represent adjacent counties, typical topological rules would require that the counties share a common...

 analysis tools. At all levels of licensing, ArcMap

ArcMap

ArcMap is the main component of Esri's ArcGIS suite of geospatial processing programs, and is used primarily to view, edit, create, and analyze geospatial data. ArcMap allows the user to explore data within a data set, symbolize features accordingly, and create maps.- Functionality :ArcMap users...

, ArcCatalog and ArcToolbox are the names of the applications comprising the desktop package.

ArcGIS Explorer

ArcGIS Explorer

ArcGIS Explorer is a free 3D GIS viewer produced by Esri. It is a part of ArcGIS software suite. AGX can be used as a client for ArcGIS Server, ArcIMS, ArcWeb Services and WMS. It supports many GIS file formats such as shapefile, GeoTIFF, MrSID, IMG and KML.Compare ArcExplorer.-External links:*...

, ArcReader

ArcReader

ArcReader is a basic data viewer for maps and GIS data published in the proprietary ESRI format using ArcPublisher. The software also provides some basic tools for map viewing, printing and querying of spatial data...

, and ArcExplorer

ArcExplorer

ArcExplorer is a lightweight data viewer from ESRI for maps and GIS data in these formats:* ESRI Shapefile* ArcInfo coverages* ArcSDE layers* Images* ArcIMS Services...

 are basic freeware

Freeware

Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

 applications for viewing GIS data.

ArcGIS Desktop Extensions are available, including Spatial Analyst which allows raster analysis, and 3D Analyst which allows terrain mapping and analysis. Other more specialized extensions are available from Esri and third parties for specific GIS needs.

Esri's original product, ARC/INFO

ArcInfo

ArcInfo is a full-featured geographic information system produced by Esri, and is the highest level of licensing in the ArcGIS Desktop product line. It was originally a command-line based system...

, was a command line GIS product available initially on minicomputers, then on UNIX workstations. In 1992, a GUI GIS, ArcView GIS, was introduced. Over time, both of those products were offered in Windows versions and ArcView was offered as a Macintosh product. The names ArcView and ArcInfo are now used to name different levels of licensing in ArcGIS Desktop, and less often refer to these original software products. The Windows version of ArcGIS is now the only ArcGIS Desktop platform that is undergoing new development for future product releases.

Server GIS

Server GIS products allow GIS functionality and data to be deployed from a central environment. ArcIMS

ArcIMS

ArcIMS is a Web Map Server produced by Esri. It is a GIS that is designed to serve maps across the Internet. Sometimes these maps are just static images allowing simple panning and zooming, while others are more complex pages...

 (Internet Mapping Server) provides browser based access to GIS. ArcSDE

ArcSDE

ArcSDE is a server-software sub-system that aims to enable the usage of Relational Database Management Systems for spatial data...

 (Spatial Database Engine) is used as an RDBMS

Relational database management system

A relational database management system is a database management system that is based on the relational model as introduced by E. F. Codd. Most popular databases currently in use are based on the relational database model....

 connector for other Esri software to store and retrieve GIS data within a commercially available RDBMS. Currently ArcSDE can be used with Oracle, DB2, Informix and Microsoft SQL Server databases. It supports its native SDE binary data format, Oracle Spatial

Oracle Spatial

Oracle Spatial forms a separately-licensed option component of the Oracle Database. Oracle Spatial aids users in managing geographic and location-data in a native type within an Oracle database, potentially supporting a wide range of applications — from automated mapping/facilities-management and...

, and ST_geometry. ArcGIS Server

ArcGIS Server

ArcGIS Server is the core server geographic information system software made by Esri. ArcGIS Server is used for creating and managing GIS Web services, applications, and data...

 is an internet application service, used to extend the functionality of ArcGIS Desktop software to a browser based environment...
ArcGIS Server is available on Solaris and Linux as well as Windows and will eventually phase out ArcIMS. Other server based products include Geoportal Extension, ArcGIS Image Server and Tracking Server as well as several others.

Mobile GIS

Mobile GIS conflates GIS, GPS, location-based service

Location-based service

A Location-Based Service is an information or entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device....

s, handheld computing, and the growing availability of geographic data. ArcGIS technology can be deployed on a range of mobile systems from lightweight devices to PDAs, laptops, and Tablet PCs.
Products: ArcPad, Mobile ArcGIS Desktop Systems, ArcGIS Server (Server-oriented APIs), ArcWeb Services (Web-oriented APIs), hosted geographic databases, ArcGIS mobile.

ArcGIS mobile ADF is an application programming interface (API) for developing solutions on various Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded platforms (pocketpc, smartphone, ultra-mobile devices, etc

Developer GIS

Developer GIS products enable building custom desktop or server GIS applications or embed GIS functionality in existing applications. These focused solutions can then be easily deployed throughout an organization.
Products: Esri Developer Network or EDN, ArcEngine (Desktop-oriented APIs), ArcGIS Server (Server-oriented APIs and a web development ADF which is part of ArcGIS Server), ArcWeb Services

ArcWeb Services

ArcWeb Services was a GIS product offered by ESRI to provide Web-oriented spatial data services. ArcWeb Services is a Hosted GIS that provides geographic web services to web browsers and other Internet-enabled technology....

 (Web-oriented APIs)

Online GIS (ArcGIS Online)

ArcGIS includes online, or internet, capabilities in all Esri software products. Online capabilities are centrally located at www.arcgis.com. These include web API’s, hosted map and geoprocessing services, and a user sharing program. A variety of basemaps is a signature feature of arcgis.com. The Esri Community Maps program compiles detailed user basemap information into a common cartographic format called Topographic Basemap.

Esri Technical Certification

The Esri Technical Certification program was launched in January 2011. The program provides an exam based certification for Esri software. The core groups for the certification include Desktop, Developer, and Enterprise. Each subcategory under these groups have two certification levels, Associate and Professional.

Esri Conservation Program

In 1989, the Esri Conservation Program was started to help change the way nonprofit organizations carried out their missions of nature conservation and social change. This vision involved providing GIS software, data, and training, as well as helping to coordinate multiorganizational efforts (i.e. The Society for Conservation GIS).

Federal investigation

On June 28, 2006, an Esri official said that the company had received a federal subpoena

Subpoena

A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...

 as part of the ongoing investigation into the ties between Jerry Lewis

Jerry Lewis (politician)

Charles Jeremy Lewis is the U.S. Representative for , and previously the 40th, 35th and 37th, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. He is a former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, serving in the role during the 109th Congress.-Early life, education, and...

 and Copeland Lowery

Copeland Lowery

Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White is a California lobbying firm founded by James Copeland in 1992, now the subject of a federal investigation into earmarks granted to its clients by Rep. Jerry Lewis...

. "We have no concerns," Esri spokesman Don Berry said. "We retain a lobbyist and it is not an issue for us." On September 5, 2006, the Associated Press reported that federal investigators were looking into a donation of 41 acres (165,921.3 m²) of land to the city of Redlands

Redlands

-Australia:*Redland City, Queensland*SCECGS Redlands, Sydney*Electoral district of Redlands-United Kingdom:*Redlands , country estate of Keith Richards, venue of the Redlands drugs bust*Redlands *Redlands...

 by the owners of Esri in 2001, land adjacent to the home of Lewis.

Between 2001 and 2006, Lewis earmarked more than $90 million for Esri projects that included defense intelligence systems such as database mapping to assist in rebuilding Iraq. Other projects included using GIS methodologies to assess the fire danger of the San Bernardino Mountains, to help move troops in the Iraq war, and to assist in reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

. From 1998-2003, the company also received another $60 million in defense contracts outside of those earmarks.

Esri has paid Lowery's firm $320,000 since 1998. Jack and Laura Dangermond have consistently been among the top individual contributors to Lewis' campaign fund, giving a combined $13,900 between 2000 and 2005. The couple has donated a combined $32,900 to the campaign fund and Lewis' PAC

Political action committee

In the United States, a political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation. Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a...

since the 2000 election cycle.

In late November 2010, the US Department of Justice notified Lewis's attorneys that the case had been concluded and closed without charges.