The ESRI Enterprise License Agreement Enterprise License Agreement – Is It Working?
The ESRI salesman hits the road to sell the ELA
Google is littered with press releases announcing customers signing up for ESRI Enterprise License Agreements. Most of these seem to be larger government organizations and corporations. But what about the Small Municipal and County Government Enterprise License Agreement Program we heard so much about last year? I’ve heard from a couple people that they’ve had difficulty with the ELA because they don’t “fit” into the program. As a ESRI Business Partner I am hopeful that this program would allow ESRI customers to get out of antiquated ArcIMS and ArcView 3.x applications and into the more modern ArcGIS 9.3 stuff. It would appear at least on the surface that it hasn’t been successful but maybe Google isn’t telling the whole story.
Anyone care to comment on the ELA program and its success/failures?
James, perfect timing! Our town of 115,000 people doesn’t fit in the ELA program. We don’t qualify for the Small Municipal ELA and the larger program isn’t workable for us. I susppose with our population declining as quickly as it is, we’ll be int he small ELA soon enough, but we seem to fall through the cracks. Shame because we’d love to get rid of all our AV 3.2 installations, but we can’t afford to upgrade everyone to ArcMap currently.
I’m not the GIS admin, but from what I’ve heard, we’ve had some luck moving forward with the ELA at our county, but its slow going. Maybe I’ll try and learn more and post back.
Still waiting…the ELA is taking months to be drafted up for us here in Canada!
Our municipality is too large at 130,000 residents. Luckily our water and power utility is under 100,000 meters, so qualify for the recently announced Small Utility Enterprise License Agreement, http://www.esri.com/industries/electric/utility_ela/overview.html
We will be meeting with our account manager about this new program in the next week or two. I will also try to post back with what we learn.
@MTBMaven: Have you (or anyone else) heard any initial price points for the SUELA? I have several small utility clients that could benefit if the price is right.
From what I hear, at least here in the Southeast US, the Small Gov’t ELA program has been quite successful.
I work for a village in suburban Chicago, we have roughly 28,000 residents and fall into the program. We were quoted a price of $35,000. The problem is we currently only spend $1,500 total on GIS for the maintenance of our one editor license. So, getting the additional funds is going to be tough especially right now. I was able to get some additional funds to get the Publisher extension, which I hope will help get the data out there through ArcReader and gain support for eventually getting the funds for the full enterprise. I’ve only been here for 2 months and the last person was very “secretive” with the data. So, I’ve got some work to do before people realize what we can do with GIS.
If you are planning on doing anything with ArcGIS Server, $35K will seem cheap. There’s tons of things you’ll be able to do with the ELA like putting ArcPad apps in the hands of inspectors, Web apps, etc. $35K can easily be justified even for small cities.
/jeez I sound like a ESRI fanboy and they piss me off constantly.
No prices yet. I hope to know more tomorrow when I meet with our account rep. We have considerable higher maintenance costs than Joe. The maintenance costs are about half of your quoted $35K for the enterprise program I manage. I know our utility has way more thick client licenses than I manage so it might work out for them.
@Joe, you have got to love the people who are secretive with their organization’s data. I just do not get that mindset.
Given how complicated some organizations license agreements can be this should make it simpler for some. But, as usual, one size doesn’t fit all. And, of course Google is saying negative things about it. That’s their job. Ultimately, how will this affect the cost-benefits ratio of these organizations that use the ELA? Also, who benefits from this more: ESRI or the customers or will it turn out to be both?
One size definitely does not fit all.
The ELA seems to make a lot of sense when your goal is to maximize the number of gis users in your organization, and you want to give them access to the full suite of ESRI tools (i.e. you are constantly maxing out of floating licenses, people are complaining they can’t do their work). It is a good fit for large organizations where people are doing a lot of ad-hoc analysis and research.
If that is not your goal, if you don’t have a strong GIS user support system in place, then you’re not going to see a decent benefit given the license maintenance costs. Your eyes have to really light up when you hear the “unlimited” use part. You have to want all of the people in your organization to think of ArcMap as a standard part of their desktop workflow.
The other place where it can help is adding to your enterprise level server license capacity, but again, the costs are high enough that if you are a small shop and can’t afford at least an initial Enterprise AGS license already, you probably won’t be able to afford an ELA either.
Interesting thoughts. This is by far the best ESRI pricing out there. That is, a couple of ArcGIS workstations, ArcServer, etc. will run well beyond $35,000 if purchased separately. So, if you have more than 5 or 6 seats of ArcGIS, this could be worth it for sure.
So, from that standpoint it is good. However, in the case of Joe, $35,000 a year is astronomical. And, how many 28,000 person communities really need an unlimited supply of ESRI software?
I would be interested, given the current economic challenges facing small municipalities, how many of these organizations will be able to re-up in year 2, 3, and 4. That is, if they were able to shell out $35,000 for software this year, can they go back to the well again and again? I’m noticing that its not just “funny money” anymore, but that these municipalities really, truly DON’T have the money anymore.
Sorry for the Manifold reference here, but a smaller organization can purchase 20 Manifold ultimate licenses, with direct connections to SQLServer, Oracle, PostGRES for around $10,000. Figure around $50 per year to get the upgrade, and you are talking around $15,000 for Manifold over 4 years. Throw in another 50 Quantum GIS software for free, and you will have more software than a sub 100,000 person community can handle.
Thats a big difference compared to $140,000 for ArcGIS over the same 4 years.
It will be very interesting to see if this is sustainable over the long haul in our current economic mess.
The problem with going non-ESRI is keeping staff. Right or wrong, you are going to have high staff turn over in a GIS shop that is not ESRI because anyone that looks for GIS jobs can plainly see that ESRI is required 99.9% of the time and staff will get anxious over losing their ESRI skills.
That is a lot more expensive than ESRI licensing costs.
Is that really how things work in GIS? I’ve been in mainstream IT/databases for years, and it’s always seemed to me that having only skill A, versus having skill A + skill B, is only going to be a disadvantage, e.g. you’ll have more job opportunities if you know Java and .NET (or Oracle and SQL Server etc) than if you just know one or the other. So having ESRI + non-ESRI on top of a good understanding of GIS is surely an advantage to the individual in the long run, even if they have a bit of a learning curve at the outset. In fact, I’d have thought the very process of learning a new GIS would help you to understand more about the hidden assumptions and pros/cons of each manufacturer’s approach and make you better at picking the right tools for the job. But I guess we’re drifting off topic here, and anyway, what do I know, eh? Just curious.
I’ve noticed people very worried about their “lack” of ESRI skills. I’ll be honest, we hire our GIS Analysts based on their ESRI ArcGIS geoprocessing skills, programmers are a different beast of course.
Exactly. For developers, I don’t really care if they have ESRI experience since it’s far easier for them to pick up enough GIS to develop GIS apps. GIS Analysts on the other will not stick around in a non-ESRI shop.
Unfortunately, too often that IS how things often work in GIS.
And because of it the geospatial community (or at least portions of it) can sometimes be its own worst enemy. I know enough people that fear for their job because they feel Google Earth is going to replace “GIS”. (when they really mean ESRI instead of GIS) Because ESRI has essentially been the only kid on the block for so long, often Joe-Business-User-of-Desktop-GIS’s mindset is that GIS is ESRI.
Picking the right tool for the job probably doesn’t even become a topic. Beside, if I give a business problem to a Java developer, I’ll probably get a web solution. If it give it to a COBOL programmer, I’ll probably get a TN3270 solution. GIS isn’t much different.
Thinking that there is only one GIS solution as this move into more mainstream IT apps. dev., that’s where even bigger problems can arise.
As an aside, I still don’t know what a “GIS Analyst”, “GIS shop” or “GIS job” is. When I started in GIS/IT 17 yrs. ago I thought I knew, but I don’t anymore.
Just a small correction on pricing. You wouldn’t need 20 Ultimate licenses – you only need one Ultimate license for your DBA and everyone else would normally use something like Enterprise, or perhaps Universal, which has everything that Ultimate does except the Administrator console that is of interest only to DBAs.
So a more typical civic installation would be 19 Enterprise licenses at $395 each and one Ultimate at $895. Municipalities would get the quantity discount as well (20% for 10 to 49 units). So the cost would be only $6900, not $10,000. I don’t mean to nitpick but $3000 is useful money to save these days for a small community.
But you might be able to get away with saving even more, if $6900 is too much, by exploiting the built-in IMS capability.
Every one of those licenses would also provide a full-power Enterprise IMS, with HTML, WMS, WFS-T, image server and tile server capabilities, which also can direct connect for no extra cost to whatever spatial DBMS you like.
Most municipalities would exploit IMS to provide routine view-only and light duty query GIS services using simple web applications. They’ll buy a $225 Universal x64 runtime license to deploy their web applications to a web server. Multicore 64-bit IMS blows the doors off single-core 32-bit ArcGIS in most applications.
I raise the IMS point because the lowest price point for cash-strapped municipalities is “free,” which is what you get if you can deploy your GIS services to your population using a web application that can run with simple IE or FireFox or other free browser on the client. IMS lets you do that for effectively zero cost. If you want a more sophisticated application, you can use one of the free WFS clients like OpenLayers.org.
If you can service tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors per day using free clients for a flat cost of only $225 per web server, regardless of how many processors you run or how many applications you run, that’s a huge cost savings.
I am hopeful that this program would allow ESRI customers to get out of antiquated ArcIMS and ArcView 3.x applications and into the more modern ArcGIS 9.3 stuff
James, if you had to harbor a guess, what percentage of GIS users do you think fall into this category? I was under the impression that very few people are using ArcView 3.x.
well.. I just recently read some articles in a journal on landscape ecology. By the fact that research and teaching institutions usually have the latest GIS version I was surprised to found that from 16 articles published in 2008 that used GIS: used 2 ArcInfo, 5 ArcView (3.x) and 4 ArcGIS – the others did not mention the GIS software used. So now you may guess/trans how that behaves for small GIS shops and municipalities.
I also agree with Harpo on Manifold and FOS GIS combination.
@Harpo: Are you or other people actually using Manifold + FOSS for real-world GIS in this way then? Just curious, as I’m new to GIS and still trying to build up a marketable skill-set on a near-zero budget.
@ChrisW, we are using a FOSS stack at a small Electric Utility. Users modify data through web based applications built using PostGreSQL/PostGIS, GeoDjango, MapServer, and OpenLayers. A copy of the application is available from http://www.coopgis.org if you want an idea of what it does. Basically users run a copy of the entire stack in Vmware Server (free) Virtual Machines that they access through Firefox and do an update to sync up with the server when they are back in the office. We haven’t tried Manifold, though we have used QGIS for a few tasks.
The common factor we’re seeing here in the Southeast among those getting or considering the SGELA is a desire to fully implement (or expand upon) an ArcGIS Server solution. It has very little, if anything, to do with adding more desktop licenses. In fact, more and more of these organizations are trying to get out of resorting to thick-client GIS solutions.
When these organizations look at their current maintenance, plus what it would take to implement an AGS (Standard or Advanced) solution, it becomes a no-brainer for many of them to jump on board with the SGELA. It becomes very easy to quantify.
That being said, the SGELA is not for everyone. But, I don’t know of anyone that’s purchased that for the purpose of adding dozens of desktop licenses throughout their organization. What a nightmare that would be from an IT perspective for a small government.
We are a mid-sized utility (38k meters). I believe that we were quoted $25k/year for the Small Utility ELA. We have an ArcInfo, ArcEditor, 3 ArcViews, 3 ArcEngines, and an ArcGIS Server Workgroup. Our maintenance costs are about $10k/yr. I’d love to have the ELA, but cannot justify its costs — especially given the current financial climate.
It seems ESRI employees have not been given promotional material about this yet. We were given the following pricing information.
Meter Count:
0 – 10,000: $10,000
10,001 – 50,000: $25,000
50,001 – 100,000: $50,000
The price is a base annual fee for a 3 year term. Most but not all software are included. Any products ESRI pays royalties for are not included, like Imagery Analyst, ArcFM, or ArcPad. Also included is 1 EDN subscription and 1 seat for Working with Geometric Networks for Utilities class. I think the Utility ELA includes 4 full passes to the ESRI Users Conference (always an important issue).
I have not read everyone’s comments yet but to add to Harpo’s thoughts, the Utilities ELA, and possibly the Small Gov. ELA, might also benefit those using ArcEngine applications.
An issue for us is how the meter count if calculated. We have a water and power utility, if we count the meters for both utilities we are in the upper tier whereas if we count the number of dwellings/properties/customers served we are in the middle tier. We are awaiting further clarification on this issue from ESRI.
I wish we had been quoted $35k; we already more than that just in ArcGIS Server maintenance. Not just our base GIS software, but our dispatch software carries a server license, our emergency management software will carry a server license soon, our work order software carries a server license. There is a lot of “integrated GIS” enterprise software out there that now has an embedded ArcGIS server license in it. (And yes, we get a cost break from the vendors if we have an ELA). Throw in our desktop licenses and hundreds of ArcGIS engine and ArcObjects licenses (again, nearly all integrated in other 3rd party non-gis software), well, you get the idea.
Of course, we are over 100k as a county, so our quote was nowhere near $35k
The population based formula works okay for cities, but for counties it gets way out of line. To even come close to matching our initial ELA quote, we would have to get buy-in equivalent to a primary ArcInfo license from half our cities (when less than 1/4th have on maintenance software); and then we get stuck with collecting the money and handling initial help desk for those cities.
if you cant spring for an ELA I would suggest getting an EAP, the ability to have a dedicated ESRI rep on your account comes in handy when a major fire flares up and you need answers fast.
Assuming the expected user base is worth the effort, the key to an ELA is to negotiate for your expected adoption rate over a reasonably long term – say five years. Then sign a one-year term with four optional renewals.
Watch the curve – when the installs start to taper off, check the going rate for basic maintenance on the seats you have installed. [be honest...many in your user community will be sitting in heated seats with adjustable lumbar supports and side airbags with 3d arm rests and the full-recline extensions...and make sure you deprecate the cost of maintaining over-licensed users who never touch the dials] When the curve flattens out, it’s time to evaluate technologies.
and another thing…DON’T be afraid to add something else in the mix if the users are asking for it. Holding on to a ‘take this, it’s free’ rationale for installing ESRI isn’t serving your users, it’s serving your own ends to justify your decision to hop in ELA with ESRI.
Archie writes: “Assuming the expected user base is worth the effort, the key to an ELA is to negotiate for your expected adoption rate over a reasonably long term – say five years. Then sign a one-year term with four optional renewals.”
Archie gives good advice but I don’t think he takes it far enough. A looming depression is no time to sign a long term contract (one year is an eternity during a depression) to pay more money than you must to get the functionality your tasks require. ELA’s are ESRI’s way of getting customers to shoulder the risks of a depression. ELA’s are bait that conceals the hook of a long-term obligation that’s going to get you roasted for ESRI’s dinner.
I trust it has escaped nobody’s attention that a common thread among industry and government leaders is the unwillingness to make any specific predictions how the economic collapse will play out. Company after company which in the past through thick times or thin would give earnings forecasts is no longer giving guidance to stock analysts. They simply don’t know what will happen. The only common thread is that everyone expects things to get much worse before they get better, and those who are in a position to hunker down are doing so. Why would anyone here roll the dice by getting on a financial hook as if they know for sure it’s not going to be so bad?
I realize that quite a few folks expect government higher up the food chain to bail them out, even those in local and state government who expect Uncle Sam to hand them a wad of cash. That expectation seems to go hand in hand with denial that times have changed in a very fundamental way, as if folks can keep on spending inefficiently without brutal, adult consideration of what is absolutely necessary to spend, as if dialing back the profligacy just a bit is enough, as if paying only ten times more than you must is a sign of economic frugality. I mean, it’s a recession after all so paying twenty or forty times more than you must to get less is no longer acceptable, right? Just dial it back a bit. Signing an ELA with ESRI is the GIS equivalent of Marie Antoinette showing solidarity with starving peasants by buying gold dishes instead of platinum dishes. Great for the jeweler but pretty darned awful for the peasants and ultimately leading to a bad end for Marie as well.
I understand the pull of inertia, but dialing back profligacy just a bit is not going to work for most folks. First, depressions have a way of eradicating whatever rosy assumptions people make about intake from local taxes and other local revenue (ELAs are aimed at government, after all). Your jurisdiction will have less money than it thinks and the GIS group’s share of it will be less than you expect. Plus, when people are being furloughed you’ll find no sympathy for having spent $100,000 for obsolete software when you could have spent $5,000 for modern stuff and gotten more for your money. I’ve heard some folks remark they’ll never get called on this, as if the peasants will never find out Marie Antoinette is eating on gold plate, but as GIS gets out into the mainstream there are now too many folks out there who know gold plate when they see it for anyone to assume profligacy will go unnoticed.
Second, Uncle Sam is not coming to your rescue in 2009 and probably not in 2010, either. In case anyone has failed to notice the calendar dates in the most recent “stimulus” bill, about 75% of that spending is over a year out. Sign an ELA with ESRI this year and don’t expect Uncle Sam to come riding to the rescue. And if your jurisdiction does get some federal cash and your GIS group manages to sneak a hand past the scrum of other claimants, your odds of recovering what you spent will be lessened by having spent it with so little foresight of the obvious tsunami.
ELAs are ESRI’s way of suckering people into contractual commitments to pay above-market price for GIS before those people realize they are about to be enveloped by a financial calamity. That calamity will visit local governments with even greater force than it has already impacted state government, and it will leave fewer survivors among those who can’t figure out how to move to a new level of price/performance. And we’re not talking about just halving the costs, we’re talking about how to get the GIS functionality you need at a twentieth of the price or less.
If you can’t figure out how to do that you’re putting yourself and your family’s welfare at risk as this depression takes deeper bites. If you don’t think that could ever apply to you, that your jurisdiction’s GIS jobs will be the last to go, have a talk with some of the California state employees being furloughed this Friday. California’s state economy went from being one of the most powerful in the nation to a credit rating dead last among the 50 states in about a year. Already the ripple effects of that are causing furloughs in cities and counties throughout California, still one of the top ten economies in the world. If it can happen there, it can happen to you.
The best way to deal with massive economic risks is to look after your own interests, to make sure you are the guy who knows how to get more out of the GIS department at one twentieth of former costs. Do that and it is more likely you’ll be the one they keep around. Breaking the paradigm means not getting held hostage to any one vendor, demanding a better price from your vendor, and buying only the licenses you need when you need them without getting stuck in any long term traps. After all, if things get worse than you guessed, if you are stuck in a long term trap you can’t take advantage of the even lower prices everyone else will be getting.
And if you are convinced you are a master prognosticator of depressions in action, that you know for a fact GIS prices from ESRI and everyone else have bottomed, well, you are trying to accomplish the legendary stunt that the stock market refers to as “calling the bottom,” that is, predicting the bottom of dropping prices. The stock market also has a more colorful name for trying that stunt: it’s called “trying to catch a falling knife.” Don’t be the one volunteering to try to catch that knife.
Hey, when the economy turns around and times get flush, if you really want to you can always go back to spending more than you need to spend. But first you have to make sure you keep your job so that when the economy turns around you’ll still be there. See http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2973 for specific GIS tips that apply to dealing with economic collapse regardless of who is your GIS vendor.
Dimitri,
http://www.smartmodz.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2206&d=1167544652
We are sharing GIS between 2 counties in NYS. WE have one GIS data center and a high speed licensed microwave circuit between the 2 counties.
This arrangement is saving both counties in software license and maintenance costs. ESRI help us set this arrangement up and now they want both counties to own and license the software. We are meeting with ESRI in the very near future to discuss these additional costs.
Does anyone know a way around this new licensing practice ESRI is trying to pull to obtain more revenue???
Thank You
You might try establishing a regional consortium, and having it formally voted into place by the governing entities of your two counties. Use this legal entity to serve both counties.
ESRI chases the legal construct that is using the software – if you make one (heck, why not add a couple other counties while you’re at it?) entity, they’ve only got one group to squeeze.
Watch out for the strong-arm approach, though. Jack gets wind of this and you’ll be in for some behind-the-scenes calls to your mayors and/or county administrators and legal resources.
Good luck with that.