GIS and Business Intelligence Integration: ESRI and IBI tighten product suites

Last week, ESRI and Information Builders Inc. (IBI) announced that they were providing tighter integration between their respesctive software solutions. Specifically, the companies are offering a bi-directional interface between ArcIMS and WebFocus. The key feature of this integration between ESRI’s geographic information system and IBI’s business intelligence platform is the ability to seamlessly go from maps to reports and vice versa. Maps that are displayed with WebFocus can be used to generate reports by selecting geographic features.

In speaking with IBI executives David Sandel, who directs the business intelligence solutions group, and Bob Hazelton, who is responsible for GIS integration, they said that there are now 30 customers where ESRI and IBI solutions are integrated. I asked them whether the benefits of integration to reveal "location intelligence" were well understood by more than these existing customers. They said that the biggest challenge to acceptance is getting people to use the technology in a way that they’ve never thought of before…something other than row and column output.

As for the type of user who best understands the benefits of this product integration, the public sector is more accepting. Right now, IBI reports that it is a 60/40 split between public and private sector customers. And those who are doing the data analysis are most excited about the results. However, Sandel noted that the private sector are still doing relatively rudimentary data integration such as showing sales data by zip code. Of course, most private companies will not talk about any solutions that offer them a competitive advantage from the integrated approach.

IBI and ESRI have had successful customers for over three years writing WebFocus procedures against ArcIMS and are now testing ArcGIS integration.