ESRI hires new Director of Product Management

ESRI Hires New Director of Product Management

November 28th, 2007 · 24 Comments · ESRI

Directions Magazine has a press release from ESRI about a new hire from outside the company. From the PR:

Says Jack Dangermond, ESRI president, “We are pleased that Dirk [Gorter] has joined our company and believe that he has much to offer with his extensive experience in product management in the commercial enterprise software industry. He will be helping us develop new markets as well as improving our products for the traditional user base.”

I’ll be honest here, I was thinking about blowing off the Developer Summit this year but maybe now I won’t. We’ll have to see how this plays out.

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24 responses so far ↓

1 Jud Aster // Nov 28, 2007 at 8:33 am

Yes… it looks like JackD is reinforcing his troops. They recently hired a New European Business Development Manager too.

http://www.directionsmag.com/press.releases/?duty=Show&id=20030&trv=1
2 anon // Nov 28, 2007 at 9:10 am

Don’t you dare blow off the DevSummit. We all have a great time there with you around.
3 Sniper // Nov 28, 2007 at 11:08 am

This is great. ESRI needs a truely enterprise-centric mind behind the wheel. I agree with James, the DevSummit just became a little more interesting.
4 EastCoast // Nov 28, 2007 at 12:22 pm

I guess now we know how the “David Maguire is leaving ESRI” rumors started. (He previously led product management at ESRI)
5 Mark // Nov 28, 2007 at 12:34 pm

I hope this doesn’t mean the ESRI product line will become a bloated resource hog like Norton…..
6 J Wallis // Nov 28, 2007 at 12:49 pm

Ah, I see the pieces are all in place. jack releases the reins and BLAMO! Microsoft sucks up ESRI.
7 Jojo // Nov 28, 2007 at 2:11 pm

I heard they were going to hire Dimitri as their new Director of Product management.
8 poppy // Nov 28, 2007 at 3:09 pm

I hope this doesn’t mean the ESRI product line will become a bloated resource hog like Norton

become ?
9 Shree // Nov 28, 2007 at 4:03 pm

Way to go, he’ll offer free Norton Antivirus with every installation of ESRI!

I wonder what kind of skills he really brings to the plate - especially GIS technologies, coming from Symantec - the godmother of memory sucking sweet hog.
10 kj // Nov 28, 2007 at 4:06 pm

plus in October they were posting for a new ArcGIS Server Product Manager to:

“Be ESRI’s primary server GIS evangelist and help direct future development of our server technology and vision”
11 NoLove // Nov 28, 2007 at 4:55 pm

Maybe one can hope this will mean version 10 will be shipping sooner? ArcGIS Server Dynamic Map Display Services will be fast (well at least faster)…one can dream.
12 Tim Maddle // Nov 28, 2007 at 7:03 pm

I hope the new PM understands that ESRI needs to take a huge look at their product line and the value they offer compared to competing products (especially on the server side). Selling overpriced products to big fish customers is only going to work so much longer.
13 Steve Citron-Pousty // Nov 28, 2007 at 8:18 pm

And so is this the point in the conversation when David writes an apology letter to James for asking him to apologize? C’mon David, don’t you think it would be the right thing to do?
14 anon // Nov 29, 2007 at 8:53 am

I like this news. ArcGIS needs to become more enterprise focused if we are to integrate it into our business model.

The current management over there has not seemed to get over the hump. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to really get moving on our ArcGIS Server applications in the next year.
15 Bill // Nov 29, 2007 at 9:08 am

Maybe it’s also a sign that someone has felt the pushback on the procing model.
16 David Davis // Nov 29, 2007 at 3:01 pm

Put me down as someone who is interested in seeing what happens here. Lets be honest here, nothing has changed at ESRI since I can remember. New blood would be very welcomed.
17 Ron Exler // Nov 29, 2007 at 11:04 pm

Surprising that this is a **new** position. Most software companies of ESRI’s size, and many smaller, have a PM person in the senior ranks (VP or Director level).

The part of the release that is really telling is that GIS is having to integrate better with IT. The product management lead will be front and center in the ability/willingness of ESRI to better integrate with business systems (and politics).

IMHO, his lack of GIS experience will not be a big negative for Mr. Gorter as ESRI is bulging with GIS expertise which he can access as needed.
18 Sean // Nov 30, 2007 at 9:57 am

One thing that has not been referenced is the following statement:

“as well as improving our products for the traditional user base”.

Does anyone else think that ESRI might be getting tired of the uphill server push with all the options out there that they are now going back to a point where they have a true stronghold, the desktop user.
19 Unimpressed // Nov 30, 2007 at 10:13 am

This is not news. Nothing will change. Bringing in another director won’t force ESRI to change anything. One of two things will happen:

1. ESRI staff ignores new guy and he leaves after a year.

2. New guy accepts the “ESRI way” of doing things and nothing changes.

There were promisses that EDN would change this year and so far we’ve had nothing (I don’t count adding RSS feeds as any change). Every year we go, we listen to ESRI, they feed us the kool-aid, we get excited, go home and then realize they fooled us all again.

Show me actions, not press releases ESRI.
20 oakfish // Dec 3, 2007 at 8:29 am

@sean

I think you’ve got a point there. Maybe they’ll get re-focused on the desktop, since they’re just so far behind in the web arena. Plus, SQL Server may put SDE on the scrap heap eventually.
21 Dave Bouwman // Dec 3, 2007 at 12:32 pm

I think that most of this conversation is missing a major point - that Dirk was brought in to help implement an agile management methodology at ESRI. Bringing in someone at the top echelons means they are serious about changing how things are done.

While I don’t (yet) know Dirk, I do know how beneficial agile has been for my team, for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and 1000’s of other companies. If you are using Scrum or another agile methodology, you likely know what I mean. If not, this seems like a minor footnote to the press release, but I suspect it will ultimately be the biggest impact. Undertaking a serious agile implementation at ESRI could make a substantial difference in many external aspects.

Personally, I’d love to see Dirk give a talk at the Dev Summit about what they are implementing. Since a major tenet of agile is shipping high quality features that are valuable to the end user, we could see some very different software coming out of Redlands.

We’ll have to wait and see what they do, but I have high hopes.
22 kj // Dec 3, 2007 at 5:42 pm

“since they’re just so far behind in the web arena”

How can you say that? -Where is there another web GIS anything like ArcWeb Services, or ArcGIS Server with the web ADF? I think ArcWeb Services is the fastest web GIS around - it seems faster than google maps. Plus the flex API is awesome. Seriousy, go download the Adobe Flex trial, look at the Flex API examples at ESRI, spend 2 or three days at it, or even a few hours. And then try to do something half as cool in a month with any other IMS.

ArcGIS Server is killer too, you can take a lot of other internet map servers and program for a month or more and not have anything nearly as good as what you can do with the web ADF and ArcGIS Server in minutes. Then make some geoprocessing tasks in model builder and publish them to the web. Then try to do anything remotley like it with any other GIS Server. Or ArcGIS Server plus mobile ADF - show me ANY other GIS server that can do what that does, and that has support thats as good (forums, docs, training, tech support that actually calls you back on the phone, etc).

I would not say they are “so far behind in the web arena”. I do which I could afford more of it though.
23 Tim Maddle // Dec 3, 2007 at 6:56 pm

So what exactly are the geoprocessing tasks that people are doing with AGS and what is the performance like? I know it’s possible to take ModelBuilder and publish a geoprocessing task, but when I did a little experiment with the “near” feature the service took over 200MB of memory and wasn’t very fast.
24 Lefty // Dec 6, 2007 at 8:58 pm

Dave, I don’t think they paid for a Director level person to implement Agile. The “Why” is not apparent yet, but I’m sure Agile isn’t the primary reason. There is just too much layers down below an ESRI Director to make me read anything into this.

I suspect this has more to do with having someone to “talk the talk” with their own big clients (FedEx, DoD, etc) than anything with ArcGIS.