Apparently people have nothing to do this morning but bug me to post an open thread. So in the spirit of bipartisanism, knock your self out you crazy Manifold users.
Crowdsourcing off topic posts for years.
About
James Fee - jfee@weogeo.com
James works for WeoGeo helping people organize, share and monetize their geo-content.
Connect
Subscribe
101 Comments
Does Manifold have a REST API for their crappy IMS product? For all their talk about CUDA and 64-bit, I’ve yet to see an example of Manifold IMS that looks better than some old ArcIMS solution.
@DonnyV: You couldn’t be more wrong, Manifold IMS is the latest in IMS technology. Take a look at this great example lifted right off their IMS pages:
http://69.17.46.182/mexico/
If that still doesn’t convince you of Manifold IMS’ amazing technlogy, Dimitri has more great examples here (http://www.manifold.net/info/ims_examples.shtml) each better than the one before it.
WOW. If that’s the best they have… wow. Doesn’t hold up to any major GIS vendor’s sample websites. I think this is very telling.
@Lefty
You realize that their examples might be crap, but it serves up that crap with 64-bit speed. ArcIMS is crap as well, but you have to wait to see how crappy it is. With Manifold IMS, the crap flows so much more quickly.
i might have fish for tea.
Bracing for Dimitri wall of text deflecting the limitations of Manifold toward ESRI.
Just to sum up Dimitri’s post here in case you don’t want to read it later:
You forgot -
That’s funny I carried out slope analyses the other week, must have imagined that I used CUDA for that.
Whenever Manifold 9 comes out I’m expecting to be using it for a lot more surface commands.
You guys are really spewing out the FUD today.
Great, you use CUDA once every two weeks. Well worth the time and effort they put into it rather than improving its cartography toolset.
“12. CUDA is a feature, even when you can’t possibly use it for your problem.”
Lets revisit this after Manifold version 9 is released.
“In Soviet Russia all ATI GPUs are sent to gulag.”
Should that not be were sent to the gulag, the Soviet Union ceased to exist many years ago. But seriously, It has been stated elsewhere that Manifold System is being developed so that it will be hardware manufacturer neutral with respect to its utilisation of GPGPUs. Meaning that AMD/ATI GPGPUs running Open-CL will eventually be supported when Open-CL has developed to a sufficient level.
“Great, you use CUDA once every two weeks. Well worth the time and effort they put into it rather than improving its cartography toolset.”
Very true. Good that you agree. CUDA enabled GPU/GPGPUs indeed might only be used once every two weeks, but then again the technology has the potential to allow you to perform a computaionally intensive operation that might previously have taken two weeks, to be performed in two days! To pass-up developing software to use hardware technological advances like GPU/GPGPUs is what is technically known as a no-brainer.
7? Really? GIS began on *nix, and sees much higher performance that any other operating system, regardless of software package.
I highly doubt that most of your statements are accurate, or have any fact to back them up.
Jim, you have to realize that is how Dimitri and Manifold think.
http://www.manifold.net/home/sanity_test.html
KipterUh is joking of course.
Wow that webpage looks like it came out straight from Web 0.1, circa 1993. I would love to give Manifold a try one day, but it does seem like they need to change their attitude a little bit.
“Just to sum up Dimitri’s post here in case you don’t want to read it later:”
I am sure Dimitri and Manifold will be very grateful for your help. We are too, since your excellent summary is so much more succinct than Dimitri’s theses, managing to include all the important facts in well under a thousand words.
I’ll post off the manifold topic and just link to my blog post this morning about ArcGIS Server javascript API on my iPhone http://giswebdevelopments.blogspot.com/2009/02/arcgis-server-on-iphone.html . ok… back to the flaming.
Yea I always forget about the speed of Manifold IMS. Who cares about features and usability when you can have Manifold IMS?
Manifold IMS is a legacy IMS system. Lets break apart their marketing talk:
This means that their IMS solutions are actually usable and modern. The REST API just proves this given how open source gurus point it out as an example of a great implementation.
Well it does much more than Manifold IMS does, but costs more. Don’t look at GeoServer because it does more and costs nothing than Manifold IMS.
Just don’t look at our forums to see the complains about its lack of capabilities.
Of course if you did do that you’d be able to do so much more than Manifold, but just assume Manifold IMS can do everything that ESRI can do even if it is false.
We suck but we suck faster
But our IMS product still can’t do much and works like a 1998 web application.
i like cheese and fat chicks.
Flash based service using Manifold IMS: http://demo.atlasalive.com/
Either need a faster server or Manifold IMS is slow.
Like all other IMS out there, there are good ones, bad ones, fast ones and slow ones. More to do with the developer and what the intended audience expects than the software.
Here’s a faster one for you:
http://ikuspegi.boslan.es/mapasikuspegi/inicio.aspx
Simple, but effective.
I’ll be honest, I don’t find that site simple or effective. I can’t figure out how to draw a box and zoom in or at least figure out how to zoom in. Of course it might not be supported on IE7…
The problem with Atlas Alive is Manifold, not the atlasalive.com folks.
This looks pretty good, but they do need to have some better webservice support, waiting for the entire image to render is slower. Having a tile mechanism built in would make it look much faster.
@James:
Shouldn’t it be ‘knock your self out you crazy anti-Manifold users’ or maybe both.
You are all nuts! Still waiting for the two emailers to take part.
At least we can leave the GeoPork thread alone.
I’m running a special on MapDotNet UX (http://www.mapdotnet.com) for all current Manifold customers. We’re offering the full retail pricing option today only!
Ah, Manifold is now a Yakov Smirnoff joke..
I don’t understand, is Manifold a Russian company?
No, at Manifold we work out of a strip mall (and outsource our work to Ukranians). We pass that savings along to you.
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=qhwbyp50kgxm&style=b&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=8761060&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1805+North+Carson+Street,+Carson+City,+NV+89701&ie=UTF8&ll=39.175803,-119.766877&spn=0,359.987791&z=17&layer=c&cbll=39.175715,-119.766883&panoid=AMXIlS5I_ZYa1b1ELibINQ&cbp=12,87.51773835954825,,0,5.067055283315387
You are all correct. Manifold is junk. Please do not use it. Keep developing using ESRI software – its just so much better…
….in the meantime, I’ll be sitting in my basement in my underwear developing Manifold applications for around $2,000 – selling it for $30,000 – to customers who normally pay $180,000 with ESRI software.
yea, you just keep using ESRI….
Cool, any examples?
“Cool, any examples?”
We hope you mean of his finished Manifold applications, not of Pepe in his basement skivvies.
I couldn’t agree more Pepe…
….in the meantime, I’ll be sitting in my basement in my underwear developing open source applications for around $0 – selling it for $80,000 (because Manifold’s products sucks and people pay more for good products) – to customers who normally pay $180,000 with proprietary software.
yea, you just keep using Manifold…
You guys are playing into Dimitri’s hands. Any talk about Manifold is a win for him.
On the other hand, suppose I don’t really care about IMS, but I am building an application that requires rather large and complex raster operations. Seems to me that a GIS that will utilize a GPU could speed things up considerably. I haven’t used Manifold yet, but I’m certainly going to find out what it can do for my needs.
Gus,
What types of operations are you interested in performing and kinds of arrayed information will you working with: remote sensing, DEMs, climate, meteorological, geophysical information …?
Currently the biggest time consumer is calculating the number of cells with a certain value within a given distance of the origin cell.
Any Atlas GIS users out there?
haha..that is a blast from the past. We used Atlas in our first GIS course in 96 or so. It wasn’t much longer after that ESRI bought them out.
Looks like there are:
http://rpmconsulting.com/atlas/
Jack must have been laughing his ass off when these dudes showed up willing to write him a check to take over development of Atlas GIS.
From the Atlas GIS brochure:
“System Requirements Minimum—386 PC, 4 MB RAM, Windows 3.x, and a hard disk drive sufficient for data storage. Recommended—486 or higher Intel®-based PC, 8 MB RAM, Windows 95® or Windows NT®, a hard disk drive sufficient for data storage, and a CD–ROM drive for U.S. address matching.”
Gosh, and only $595 a seat!
But, I think i will pass on this. It is much too advanced. I’ll stick with Manifold System 8x X64 Ultimate Edition, its parallel processing on multi-core CPUs and GPGPUs, 64-bit Windows operating systems and their support for more than 2Gb of addressable RAM.
Apples and oranges Shrek. While you could get Manifold to do what Atlas GIS does (even if it does it very retro), some people would pay not to have to customize it.
MapInfo probably has closer tools than ESRI to what Atlas GIS once was.
I really doubt anyone who is sitting in the basement in their underwear…is really developing software. Maybe, developing something else…
With the economy we might all be sitting in the basement working on GIS.
I would need to first, work on a basement before able work in a basement!
I may have to use the garage for the time being.
The economy is doing what it’s suppose to do…go through a “re-adjustments” and shedding dead weight.
Currently it’s a great economy for buyers!!
I hope they pass the provision where home buyers get $15,000 back on their taxes.
Yes, because we don’t have enough incentives and tax breaks for home owners.
Yes, true! I want to be greedy like the rest and get my cut of the pie!!
Since we were talking about basements. I would need to buy a new house. I would like to be like everyone else, sitting in their basement only in underwear.
In all seriousness. I would much rather see the 15grand go into my pocket, than a bank, financial outfit, car company, etc… If given the chose between those two.
In a perfect world, there should be flat tax with no deductions.
I’m sitting in my attic in a thong “developing software” if that’s what you kids are calling it nowadays.
I was joking, but glad I posted this anyway because the responses have been great. Best laughs I’ve had in awhile. Great comebacks!
@KoS You are a revolutionary!
Look if there is GeoPork, who are we to not take it?
I’m just wondering if it’ll be served with barbecue sauce or a dry rub.
Viva-la-revolucion!!
gets pitchfork out and lights torch
shouts “Long live GIS” “Working in basement, only in underwear” “GIS” “GIS” “GIS”…!!!!
sticks pitchfork in all-mighty geopork
Open threads are always turning into Manifold threads.
Manifold is garbage.
Good luck
WOW, an open thread and the Manifold bashers come out in force! You guys keep spending $$$ and bashing, and I’ll keep saving $$$ and doing GIS
Seriouly though, sure, Manifold doesn’t have everything (or 3rd party developer support) that the ESRI “stack” has. But it can do well over 95% of what most GIS users need, at a fraction of the cost of ESRI products. It can even use MySQL and PostGIS for a spatial database while keeping the data OS compliant, so the open source guys can use their tools on the data as well. So to me, it really makes sense to have it in my tool box.
OK…. it’s time to go jump in the pool before I get burnt by all the flames…..
Why won’t ESRI let you trade a free UC registration for the DevSummit or any other Summit for that matter?
I have wondered that myself. That would be a great thing to do.
What happened to Mapopolis?
I always love the open threads. Not to beat a dead horse, err. Manifold…. But I’ve always wondered how much money this company loses by having Dimitri as the front man(owner??)? One thing anyone knows from business 101 is don’t bad mouth the competition. Highlight your strengths against the competitors weaknesses. I can say that I think Manifold is a fine application at a great price. But no way in hell will I suggest them as a solution to our corporations GIS needs.
So, let me get this right Dux – You follow Business 101 which says “don’t badmout the competition”.
You ackknowledge that Manifold is a fine application at a great price. But, there is no way in hell you would suggest them.
Part of Business 101 is to use a good product that meets your needs. Therefore, even though there is an acceptable product at a “great” price, you would not recommend it to your customers. That almost seems unethical, or at least dumb business. I feel sorry for the people you would be advising.
Sounds to me that you need to go back to Business 101. I’m glad that you don’t advise my company.
Yeah, Manifold is a fine product. But I think ESRI makes a much better set of products. It is like comparing a Toyota Corolla to a Lexus LS09. Both are fine vehicles, but why drive a Corolla, when you have it all with the Lexus?
Manifold still was not a whole lot cheaper once I priced it for the whole organization. We have over 70 desktop users but get by with 25 floating licenses. And a lot of those users (like me) use multiple desktops/laptops (I’ve used ArcGIS Desktop on 5 laptops, 8 desktops, and 6 virtual machines at last count). Of course, I would likely just stick a single node-locked manifold license on one of the virtual desktops and access that from the others if I switched – but at least 50 of the other users don’t use virtualized environments. Manifold isn’t so cheap when you get up into those numbers.
So, for 25 licenses, what is the cost for ArcGIS? What extensions are you getting with that? I can’t see how the price would be close, even if you buy the license server at $1400.
The license server is $1995, all versions must be the same version, and there are no bundling discounts. So, that’s 25 Ultimate licenses with no discounts, or just over $25.5k. That’s just to replace arcinfo. Because of specific extension requirements, we would have to put our floating ArcViews on there too, which brings the bill up to $32.2. Except that we also have to network isolate the licenses onto 3 different license servers for political reasons. Now we are up to $36k+.
For the node locked ArcViews, we can drop to 32-bit enterprise+geocoding. That’s another $20k+, bringing the bill up to over $56k My best estimate for tech support would be around $4k/year (hard to match up, since most of our support is phone support, not email support, but I assumed we would switch to email support). Grand total, over $60k/year.
We pay less than that (not by much, but by a few thousand) for all of our ESRI desktop licenses including extensions, developer support, EDN subscriptions, and in person training days. And that comes to the last point… vendor training. Manifold has none. Videos don’t cut it in this environment; not even 3rd party in person training will cut it. Want to be a large enterprise software product? You have to have vendor training and on-site support. I included that in the ESRI price, but there is no way to include the equivalent for Manifold.
Unbelievable! I dont know whether to laugh at your or weep for you.
LOLZ.
Brett,
thanks for the detailed numbers. It appears that you worked out a deal with ESRI, because to get one copy of ArcGIS + ArcEditor, etc., you would be spending over $10K I think. So, how you pulled off 25 copies is a credit to your negotiating skills (I want to talk to you next time I ask for a raise!).
However, I have to say there are probably better ways for you to bundle the products. For instance, a license server for Manifold Enterprise with some extensions like surface tools (~$650), and then maybe one or two copies of Manifold Ultimate. Then you start getting into the discounts (up to 30%). With the right mix and match combinations, you are looking at something around $14K.
But, that doesn’t get you around the training issue. You are correct, for really large organizations they often want the feel-good feeling of a direct connection with the vendor. This isn’t a criticism. Really large organizations aren’t as worried about saving a few thousand dollars, but would rather have the assurance that when they pick up the phone, they will get the answer they need (time is money in this case).
For our software, we are get government contract rates, volume discounts, and we get the secondary purchase discount (we only pay primary price on the first license out of each 10). Plus, we do have negotiating leverage when we need new licenses.
Training is not as bad for a large organization. There you can have dedicated trained trainers. We don’t have that luxury. The people with the skills to train already do not have enough time to do their work. They cannot spend the hours training people with no geographic background (much less gis background) on how to use geographic software. Meanwhile, those people need hands-on in-lab training to master the software with a real person answering their questions and correcting their mistakes. GIS will never be their primary function, maybe not even their secondary function, and training must be made intensive and response for them to adopt it.
I think the biggest problem for us is our power user pattern. The top 14 users who would need access to geocoding tools and spatial tools are all multiple machines users. I’m probably the worst, I use ArcGIS desktop regularly on 4 virtual desktops, 3 real desktops, and 2 laptops, and occasionally on 2 more virtual, 5 physical, and 3 laptops (plus another 18 desktops that I use about once a year). The other 13 have at least 2 platforms each they use, 3 users have at least 6 physical platforms each that they use. Virtualization will eventually phase this out, but not yet. Now, my understanding was that extension licenses could not be floated for manifold. You can only access floating extension licenses through a floating Ultimate license. “A Manifold License Server can be used to authenticate only main Manifold System licenses and not optional extensions. If we require an extension such as Business Tools, Geocoding Tools or Surface Tools we must run a License Server that serves Universal Edition licenses. Universal Edition includes all three extensions within the main Manifold System edition.” The geocode extension is our real killer. Virtually every client in our organization needs access to geocoding. We only do versioned enterprise editing workflows, so that pretty much means enterprise edition for everyone (unless I’m reading wrong and you can read from enterprise class databases without enterprise). Non-editors in our org get arcview, but we don’t even bother with ArcEditor licenses since the difference between ArcInfo and ArcEditor is less than $50/license (due to the contract price and the extra primary maintenance incurred by splitting between the two), and we use topologies in most of our editing workflows. I think by reworking floating licenses, Manifold becomes much more competitive in large organizations. Extensions very much need to be floated; geocoding is not used continuously though used by everyone. Surface tools would require less than 2 licenses floated though used by over a dozen users. Meanwhile, the price per license server gets painful. Three was the minimum (there are state and local laws barring certain departments from sharing servers), but we use keyed laptop license servers generously as well – emergency management has a pool of 20+ laptops and there is no guarantee that you can get access to a specific one during a deployment (and these are operating off the local network when in use).
Why is there someone posing as me on here?
There can never been enough Donny V’s I suppose.
IP and email have never been used before…
Pretending to be other people is common on this forum (and is a bit loathsome). Do you think that Jack Dangermond really likes cheese and fat chicks (see “his” above post)? Of course in terms of this thread the funny thing is that people could pretend to be a particular someone from Manifold and we’d never know
Exactly.
Another joke totally ruined by having to explain it…
Hi guys,
As a developer who works with both ESRI and Manifold, I can say that ArcGIS Server API, architecture and functionality are far more better that Manifold. But sometimes, the budget is really a problem and if a cheaper tool does the job, then why not? We are using Manifold in a project in which only ESRI licenses would cost almost 1 million euros. I know, Manifold isn’t perfect, their COM API for IMS would have been a new thing 10 years ago, but we can do the job with it. So, I say “Give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar”
i like all the posts, open to no gis guy ? very fun (true) to read.
All people ( 95% ? ) don’t wait 64 bit or gpu for have good product. Some delphi product are innovative and so still run on 32 bits architecture, and have a look how Paul ramsey update postgis 1.4 union speed.
Does IMS ( share data in a visual way is the main job of gis people). Hey you see i do this beautifull map server using google !! yes that help me a lot to waste/spend time to the internet !!!! Does usefull administrative datas are available using IMS for being compute/study?
So 64 bit , IMS, gpu is vaporware for most of us. Main thing is sql engine , friendly way to have results, debug, automation to extract informations from raw data to compute them with time and space.
Don’t Know manifold features but they are the simpliest “one” company because they are only Microsoft centric, support only one english documentation and one software version and one forum, one website …..
All this one ,let the manifold team focus on new GIS functionalitites (any idea!).
The main thing is that if you are happy with your software licence and aware that some alternative product exist and could be ( or not in the feature) suitable for some specific tasks, so you are good boy and not crazy !!.
The manifold market seem to go to specific professionnal gis market (big data to compute with 64 OS software plenty of RAM and many gpu card , water cold system, big power) after no money geek?/sql/programming user .
the main thing is that nobody is “indifférent” to the only one manifold product!!!! whatever the thing that have been write. People ll make their own opinions by have a look to manifold documentation and forum.
sorry for my bad english …….a view from an non gis guy !!! but …. i am one of crazy people who have buy an limited time manifold licence.Hope v9 ll resolve more and more painfull things that seem to be occur when read manifold forum but seem easely done using others gis products.
like the ajax edit comments way to have limit time to edit the post 1m42…
ended up having bangers & mash in the end. was nice, gravy were’nt great.
“gravy were’nt great.”
So long as it moves and the spoon dont stand up in it!
Kinda pathetic to see you people bashing Manifold. Like ESRI has never made any similarly arrogant statements? Get real.
ESRI made a good choice in adopting flex/SL/rest/JS – but everyone easily forgets the years and years of horrible ArcIMS/buggy + crap .Net web sites. What a short memory you have.
Personally we use ESRI though a lot of what we do could be done as easily with open source products. Politics shrug.
As for Manifold, it has some interesting features. I think their market tack is off a bit – their focus is too broad for the size of their organization. If they focused more on the actual GIS workstation side and developed CUDA/their cartographic products they could flesh out their role well as niche. Make it interoperable with ESRI server products and open source things like featureserver/geoserver/mapserver/etc.
Sure ESRI does a lot of stuff better – but they’ve been at it for far longer and it’s only recently that their desktop software even stabilized. Hell, I can still crash 9.3 if I throw data at it. It’ll crash before it runs out of memory so they still have a lot of issues.
Likewise with all the fancy flex/SL stuff (Note: Yes we have flex apps also). I love it. Users love it. But again it can break if you push it too hard and still lacks a lot of what I would call core functionality. Just look at the disappointment that is the GeometryService for starters.
Don’t any of you remember the crap that was 8.x and 9.1 etc.. constantly crashing? Tons of stupid bugs?
Fortunately I get great service from ESRI so that’s a big factor also. However on a pure software basis they are nothing remarkable – they just have a mature product and a large number of users/people.
Gotta love the ESRI fan-bois that think ESRI invented REST, etc.
Let’s praise them for what they are – the Microsoft of GIS with a large installed base and generally savvy business minds that know what to acquire and maintain a broad focus so when one thing works out there is another technology you can try.
They are not however, the PARC of GIS.
Finally common sense and objectivity prevails! … thanks Brian.
“Let’s praise them for what they are – the Microsoft of GIS with a large installed base and generally savvy business minds that know what to acquire and maintain a broad focus so when one thing works out there is another technology you can try.”
I would hope the “them” is refering to Manifold.net and not ESRI. Otherwise, likening ESRI to Microsoft is fallacy.
Microsoft is a go-ahead innovative business that develops its software products to take advantage of the latest hardware and software technologies. ESRI on the other hand, is currently failing to produce products able to take advantage of the latest hardware and software technologies. There is no valid equation that can be made between the two in this regard.
Give it a rest Nick.
Hi people…
Cheaper is better? Ok, I’m sick of the Wal-Mart mentality of GIS. It’s time to think about quality and efficiency. If ESRI is better, serves my need, I’ll stick with what works. 95% doesn’t cut it. Time is money and I’m not wasting my time with 95% (what does 95% mean really? Did you take a poll?). Most of what we do as GIS professionals is helping people do their job more efficiently and providing spatial intelligence. This is what GIS brings to the table. I don’t care what software is used just as long as it does the job. It’s the whole enchilada that I’m looking for. Network, Hardware, Software, better intelligence, GIS people who care about the quality of their data and solutions instead of going to the lowest bidder….ok, I’m getting off track and would like to start a rumor.
I heard Manifold is asking for a bailout. Apparently, their basement is full of ESRI envy and suffers from a lack of clothing.
Hi Luke.
“Cheaper is better? Ok, I’m sick of the Wal-Mart mentality of GIS. It’s time to think about quality and efficiency…”
I’ve no axe to grind re. ESRI vs. Manifold vs. Open-source, but as a newbie to GIS and having worked in non-GIS IT development in the public sector, which is where much of GIS seems to be based too, I’d question the existence of “the Wal-Mart mentality”. From what (little) I’ve seen, ESRI dominates the market in public and private sectors, and it is by far the most expensive GIS software package: hardly a Wal-Mart Special. Of course, it’s probably also the most sophisticated general purpose GIS product, and if it does what you want and you’re happy with the price, great. And as you say, time is money. But money is money too, and is (or should be) an important factor in decision-making, especially in the public sector, because money spent unnecessarily on expensive software licences, when cheaper products might fill the same need, is money taken away from the budget for filling in the gaps where no proprietary solution can always do exactly what you want, or it’s taken away from other public services (or taxpayers). I’ve seen plenty of cases where public sector managers have been dazzled by a slick Powerpoint presentation into buying loads of software they don’t need and can ill afford. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect people to make a proper business case for spending tons of money on software X.
So cheaper is not necessarily better, just as you say. But neither is it necessarily worse.
Agreed. As an addition, I’ve been seeing way too many GIS jobs in the public sector which is not necessarily a good thing for efficiency. We need more private sector jobs so keep supporting your local GIS consultant/developer. As for the Manifold software, I was really disappointed in the capability when testing it at a trade show. Currently, I don’t see anyone competing with ESRI in functionality for GIS analysis and editing. However, we’re hopeful for more competition in the future as ESRI desktop software is becoming outdated with newer hardware capabilities. Don’t get me started about core pricing.
Love the casual repartee.
The problem with the idea of saving money on GIS software is that money is already saved on GIS software… by not funding it. We are a big county. Most of our department level software packages run a million+ to purchase and several hundred thousand for maintenance. Procurement, payroll, work orders, assessment, dispatch, CMS, each of these is going to be a seven figure software product. If they have GIS integrated, it is ESRI and nothing else. How much do we spend on GIS software? Less than $120k including the server OSs, CALs, and database licenses. We can switch to open source for some solutions, but anything enterprise will require integration with the existing enterprise solutions. And the GIS staff are the ones who will have to do the integration. GIS is just not that important, and it’s not where you make cuts to “save” money.
I think I understand what you’re talking about. Most GIS people are held back on developing capabilities within their organization because of bureaucracy and politics. Adding large amounts of staff in an organization is not going to solve everything. Most of the cost for GIS is staff not software. Why have a developer on staff using them 20% of the time? This is more efficient in the consulting world.
Getting back to the topic, Manifold is another stab at providing alternative desktop GIS solutions. Many organizations have tried weeding out ESRI but have failed (miserably). The market is ripe for alternatives to be created but our own government doesn’t see the private sector as a solution. This doesn’t make sense to me. We need more investment in products and solutions like Manifold, further development of products like Arc2Earth, creative implementations from GIS consultants or we become another stovepipe technology/solution. Ok…this topic is getting too serious. Steelers suck, Cards rule!
@ChrisW – very well said!
@Luke “Time is money and I’m not wasting my time with 95% (what does 95% mean really? Did you take a poll?).”
Come on, take a poll? Are you serious (I’m guessing not)? The 95% I referred to is obviously a guestimate, the best true comparison of the two products that I know of is several years old, and compares ArcGIS 8.3 to Manifold 6.0 (available at: http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/165). There have been big changes in both applications since then. A true comparison is quite difficult because a “guestimate” of probably 99.9% of everything that can be done natively in Manifold can also be done in ArcGIS (maybe 100%-but I’m not going to track it all down, I’m thinking about Manifold’s ability to connect directly to, read, and edit spatial databases without an extension or SDE, as well as some other features such as Spatial SQL for images), but it may take ArcInfo and/or the purchase of an extension or two. Of course, with the great third party support for ESRI products, there isn’t much (if anything) that can’t be done with ESRI as your base GIS ….. if you have the money.
“Cheaper is better? Ok, I’m sick of the Wal-Mart mentality of GIS.”
Unfortunately, some organizations aren’t made of money, and can’t afford to purchase the required ESRI licenses for everything they need, and everyone who needs to use them. Quite often the purchase of GIS products is often weighed against other needs such as new/replacement Police/Fire vehicles, or additional Officers on the street. In a flat/declining economy the funding for GIS gets even more difficult than is was 2-3 years ago. This is where Manifold can really aid in the promotion and use of GIS. We are using PostGIS for our spatial data base, with Manifold as our “main” GIS platform (I know … how dare I utter such heresy that anyone should standardize on …. Manifold ..
..). But, we also have a few ArcGIS/ArcView and AutoCAD Map 3D users, where these applications fit the needs of the user base better than Manifold (the GIS department supports and uses all three). With ZigGIS 2.0 for ArcGIS, and the PostGIS FDO provider for AutoCAD Map, the ESRI and AutoCAD users can connect to, and edit, the PostGIS database, the same database used by the Manifold users (no SDE).
“If ESRI is better, serves my need, I’ll stick with what works. 95% doesn’t cut it. Time is money and I’m not wasting my time with 95%…”
I couldn’t agree more about your time is money statement … that’s one of the reasons I often opt to use Manifold instead of ArcGIS. The screen refresh rate for Manifold with a big ECW image in the background, and a lot of vector data and labels, is MUCH faster than ArcMap (or AutoCAD Map), making any time spent performing basic editing tasks, such as moving vertices of a line or polygon to match orthophotography, much more efficient in Manifold (almost instantaneous refresh rates in Manifold, with the same data in ArcGIS it takes several seconds… I realize that SDE and ImageServer could make the refresh rates in ArcGIS much better, but we can’t afford them). If I have to put together a nice looking map quickly, approx. 70% of the time I use ArcGIS. If I need to do some geocoding on our road centerline data, I’ll use ArcMap. But if I need to do a complex spatial query, I’ll almost always use Manifold.
The bottom line for us, GIS is all about the data, and providing our users with efficient access to the data, with tools that do what they need. For the majority of our users, Manifold fits the need. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t use it, regardless of how inexpensive it is. Just like ArcGIS, Manifold is a very high quality desktop GIS product. But, unlike ArcGIS, we can afford to put a desktop GIS application on many users PC’s, which gives us more time to create and administer the GIS data, rather than being a map making service.
I’ve used ESRI products for well over 20 years now (I started off with PC ArcInfo – with a customer # under 1500). During this 20 some odd years, I’ve also used several other GIS/RS products, either because I needed to do something that ESRI products couldn’t do, or I couldn’t afford to purchase their solution, and another vendor offered the solution at an affordable price (including MapInfo, TNT Mips, ERDAS, IDRISI, Global Mapper, DMS, and Surfer to name a few). This isn’t an ESRI vs. Manifold thing for me, it’s simply about getting the best bang for the buck, and being a good steward for the tax payers and the money they entrust us with.
Ok, I can’t let this go because the conversation is very healthy to discuss. You say, “being a good steward for the tax payers and the money they entrust us with.” You are using ArcGIS, Manifold and many other GIS products. Is having both Manifold and ArcGIS saving money? How about efficiency? Staffing multiple people to maintain a complex system is not efficient. Streamlining workflow with the best technologies will help drive costs down. In fact, staffing is not always the answer. However, resources are the answer. That’s where GIS consultants and support solution companies provide better efficiencies. Can you trace all of your assets, depreciate them and do future projections for maintenance and service needs? These are the types of questions GIS can answer and to just get stuck on staffing seems like an ‘empire building’ scheme. I’m not saying you are promoting this; I’m just saying we (as a GIS community) need to evaluate our resources (software, staffing, consulting, hardware and workflow) and provide our superiors with the best, most efficient recommendations. If you are using both Manifold and ArcGIS, is this cost efficient?
@Luke
Sorry for the belated reply, I just now saw your response. I’ll try to clarify my previous posts a bit.
Actually, for us, having both ArcGIS and Manifold is saving money. The small handful of users that need to use some form of ArcGIS (a total of 6), 4 of which are GIS staff, compared to the 23, soon to be 27, users with Manifold (includes 12 floating licenses), yes, we are saving money. That’s 21 users (27 manifold users – 6 that have ArcGIS) that don’t need access to a more expensive ArcGIS license. If we just look at ArcView vs Manifold, that’s a savings of approximately $20,000 in purchase price (for just ArcView – that doesn’t provide some of the simple tools needed such as line splitting, that Manifold does provide), plus maybe $300 per seat (20 seats) per year more for support ($6,000). The savings of using PostGIS instead of ArcGIS Server (just to get SDE) are even more dramatic. Even if we only used Manifold for a handful of tasks (for ArcView users -maybe for splitting lines/polygons, performing an identity, or creating thiessen polygons , or for reformatting/rearranging/renaming attribute data columns), it’s still much less expensive per seat than most extensions for ArcGIS, making it a valuable addition to our GIS tool box.
I think you may have misunderstood my references to staff/staffing. We want to get GIS on to the desktop of potential users, not increase or GIS staff. Our philosophy is that it is time to move the use of GIS out of the realm of the “GIS Guru”, and providing hard copy maps for everyone. We want other staff to have access to the data and GIS tools they need, when they need them. This will free the GIS staff to develop, maintain, and perform more of the types of analysis that the average user can’t, instead of being a map-making service. Sure, not everyone will be doing much more than just viewing data and creating maps from the templates we provide. But, if they have the need/desire to do more, they will have the tools available. We have a very small number of staff dedicated to just GIS, 2 for the entire organization, and 3 in the Electric Utility. This is in a City with a population of approx. 45,000 and 1,100 employees (the Elect. Utility services approx. 39,000 customers).
For GIS software, the Electric Utility primarily uses AutoCad Map (this may change), Public Works uses a combination of AutoCad Land Development and Manifold, The Police Department uses ArcGIS/ArcView, Planning and Zoning uses Manifold with one seat of ArcGIS/ArcView. To ensure that we can support all of the users needs, the GIS Division uses ArcGIS, AutoCad Map, and Manifold. I also have ERDAS Imagine (through a partnership with another government agency), Global Mapper, and some extensions for ArcGIS to provide image processing and 3D/LiDAR processing support for other departments/users. The other software mentioned in my earlier post was at a previous job, where I was the only true GIS person on staff.
Improved efficiency and workflow are why we have “standardized” on Manifold. It provides a very comprehensive set of tools, a direct connection to “live” data in PostgreSQL/PostGIS (with the ability to give any user edit capabilities), requires a minimum to train new users, and is very easy to install/manage. Installing Manifold takes 2-5 minutes from start to finish, and upgrading is equally as efficient. Screen refresh rates when panning, zooming, or editing vector data (moving points/vertices) are almost instantaneous (I’ve done comparisons of Manifold vs ArcGIS with the same data, a lot of labels, and an .ECW background image – with Manifold the entire screen is refreshed before ArcGIS can refresh just the background image). Plus, Manifold provides all of the tools in a single user interface; where with ArcGIS you have ArcMap and ArcToolbox, which does confuse new users (especially when they have to close ArcMap to free up a dataset to use in ArcTolbox).
For the casual user we have developed some very basic Web maps based on Manifold’s IMS. We plan to improve these in the future, but they provide the casual user with access to the data they need. Sure, ArcGIS Server could give us a lot more functionality and “eye candy” out of the box than Manifold does, but at $225 for a 64bit runtime license for the server, we are very happy with what we have. Plus, software/server management is MUCH easier and more stable with Manifold than ArcGIS Server.
Manifold is giving us the ability to literally provide more with less!
I can see where you are attempting to lessen the burden of software costs. However, I still believe using multiple GIS systems is unnecessary for most local governments and staffing (hours worked internally). Yes, you save costs for software but the usability and the integration with other business processes cannot compete with ArcGIS. Is this a picking up a penny but stepping over a dollar scenario? Before I spout off without understanding your dynamics, do you have Asset Management software in place that can connect to PostGIS and PostgreSQL? Do you have topology built to maintain data integrity? Are you able to provide history and archives of your data? Can you synchronize your field collection to the business and spatial databases? Is metadata maintained in Metadata standards provided by FGDC?
As for ArcGIS Server, I have yet to have ArcGIS server crash and maintenance is simplistic. I don’t know what kind of system you are experienced with but this is not the ArcGIS Server I know. At best, Manifold and many open source solutions are proprietary to the developer as ArcGIS solutions can be customized and leveraged across multiple vendors with legal support. Can you provide support for Open Source? I know there’s forums but legal technical support? There are other ways to tackle this problem but see a danger in the future for anyone who uses Manifold as a production system. What if you were to get hit by a bus? Are there multiple people out there experts at Manifold? I surely wasn’t impressed with Manifold and support is less than ideal. Also, performance for ArcGIS is only as good as the person who sets it up. I don’t see the issues with ArcGIS as you do since I’m experienced and skilled at the ESRI software line. I’m not opposed in changing my paradigm about Manifold and other open source solutions and welcome the challenge, not that Manifold is open source.
Luke – Thanks for the response!
I can agree that using multiple GIS systems might be unnecessary in most small local governments, but it may often be needed due to imbedded corporate culture, established workflows/procedures, or limited funding. As far as usability and integration, ESRI has fantastic 3rd party support, no doubt the best in the business (one of the reasons we use and support ArcGIS). But, compared to Manifold, ArcGIS desktop (without Data Interop. or FME) has very dismal external data/DB integration capabilities. Things got better with 9.3, but this is one of the areas where Manifold does very well. It can link to almost any database, Excel spread sheet, or .csv/txt and use the data as either a database table, or as a “drawing” (spatial data) if the DB has coordinate info. Of course Manifold can directly read data (tabular or spatial) from Oracle Spatial (or standard Oracle), SQL Server 2008, DB2, MySQL, PostGIS, and others through ODBC.
I don’t believe we have a “picking up a penny but stepping over a dollar scenario”, since it is easier to train the general user to use Manifold than it is ArcGIS, and the general usability of the software is excellent (unless you’re trying to do things the way they are done in ArcGIS). Sure, there are some of procedures that aren’t as straightforward as they could be (or as easy as they are in ArcGIS), but so far none of them have been even close to deal breakers, or caused any major complaints from the users. But, if you were a Manifold user using ArcGIS, you would have similar issues with the usability of ArcGIS. We’ve been able to easily integrate Manifold with data coming from our Enterprise DB/Billing System (plus we can use the data in ArcGIS and AutoCAD Map as well). Manifold/PostgresSQL “out of the box” definitely does not have the data management capabilities and synchronization for field data collection that is available with ArcGIS, and third party vendors. But this could be built in if it was really needed, or you could contract with someone like ScanControl, Inc. to perform the integration (they have done some very good work with Manifold, SQL Server, and mobile data collection– take a look at their website http://www.scancontrol.com/Tutorials/ManifoldGISReports/tabid/102/Default.aspx). The same is true for data history and archives (archiving the data requires a simple script in PostgreSQL – providing data history would require a bit more programming).
We don’t have any asset management software, so we don’t have any problems with integration (but given Manifolds capabilities with external DB’s, it shouldn’t be a big problem). We have been looking into automating some of our asset management for street signs. Given the current economic climate, this will probably be done using an in house application based on Manifold/PostgreSQL/PostGIS, with general database entry/maintenance done via an asp.net application, and spatial database management done through Manifold.
Unfortunately, Manifold does not have direct support for FGDC Metadata creation/editing, and this could be a deal breaker for many organizations. If I need it, I use ArcGIS for metadata, though it could be done in Manifold the same way I used to do it before any of the metadata tools were developed – with a text editor (ouch!). One area that ArcGIS/SDE shines is the rules that can be assigned to things such as enforce topology relationships. We maintain topology in Manifold, but the tools are not nearly as robust as those found in the full ESRI stack.
I’m not sure I understand your statement “At best, Manifold and many open source solutions are proprietary to the developer as ArcGIS solutions can be customized and leveraged across multiple vendors with legal support.”. As I understand it, ArcGIS and Manifold are both proprietary software products, and Open Source by definition is not proprietary, though the licensing makes it unattractive to companies in the for profit development of GIS tools. Manifold can be customized and developed by users and third parties just like ArcGIS (though possibly not as extensively). I’ve seen a complete application built off of Manifold that doesn’t use the Manifold GUI (can be run with the Manifold runtime license). If you’re interested, you can get a pdf of the Manifold object model at http://www.manifold.net/info/freestuff.shtml. As far as “legal support” goes, I’m guessing that you are referring to support that you can hold liable if bad advice is given, or if the software fails. If I get support directly from Manifold, using a support token or paying for it, then yes, I have legal support. As far as “legal support for PostgreSQL/PostGIS, if we chose to, we could pay for and get “legal” support, but we haven’t needed to go that route. True, we don’t have the same type of support offered by ESRI, but I never use support much anyway (I’ve called ESRI support twice in 22 years). I prefer to work out issues on my own, unless I’m certain that the issue is a problem (bug) in the software. This may not be the most efficient way to do things, but I certainly learn a lot more. Now if I was a developer, I might have reason to utilize support more often. There is a lot of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) with Open Source software regarding mission critical applications. Some of this may be well founded under specific conditions, but to a large degree, if you have a good “escape” plan, back up the data (exported to a generic format), and there are no security issues with the OS software, then your risk is minimized. We’ve been using PostGIS for about a year now, and have had NO data integrity or stability issues, so I’m very comfortable with it, and confident it will perform well. Did I miss the point of your statement completely here?
As a side note, I think there is a lot of FUD with Manifold for two (maybe 3) main reasons. One is their non-standard approach to support (and their business model in general), which is a double-edged sword. First and foremost, it does keep the cost of the software down, but the flip side is that people who are used to calling support A LOT (hand holding?), have a lot of FUD about using/supporting the software. I’ve never used a support token, so I can’t say what their official support is like. But, the forum is VERY helpful, and the software is very stable. Also, the user manual gives you almost everything you need – but there is sooo much information there, it can take a bit of reading and digging to get the information you are really looking for. The second problem was their claim to be the best GIS available. This has been toned down quite a bit on their new website, which is a big plus. IMHO, this claim has hurt them more than helped. I’d say that Manifold could easily be the best value in GIS available, but ESRI clearly has the “best” GIS – if you can afford/justify the purchase and maintenance all of the needed portions of their software stack. The 3rd possible factor for increasing FUD with regard to Manifold is that there is very little known about the company. For them (Manifold) this may offer a bit of a competitive advantage, but it doesn’t console the potential user that they aren’t going to go out of business tomorrow. Of course, any software/GIS company could go out of business over night, or be bought out and left for dead, leaving the user “stranded”. But the less we know (or think we know) about something, usually the more FUD we have about it. Again, having a clear exit plan, regardless of the software used, is a must.
If I were to get hit by a bus, there are other people on staff who are VERY capable of keeping things going, and have assisted in setting the system up, and in every aspect of system/data maintenance. Plus, I’m no genius, if I can learn ArcInfo (I really miss spending hours editing coverages via the command line … NOT!), ArcGIS, Manifold, AutoCad Map, plus several other GIS/RS software packages (mostly self taught), I’m sure someone else could learn Manifold if a candidate from outside our organization was selected to replace me (we currently have 4 people who are cross trained with ArcGIS/Manifold, and 3 that are cross trained with AutoCad/Manifold, Manifold being their second “GIS” software). True, other small organizations interested in using Manifold may not have the luxury of having backup personnel, so getting a replacement already trained in Manifold might be a bit more difficult. But I wouldn’t consider this a big issue. If you have a true understanding of GIS (not just a software jockey), the 2 day training video from gisadvisor.com will get you up to speed in no time. That is what I’ve used for training, and so far it has worked very well (and at less than $100 per person, it’s very affordable).
My references to ArcGIS Server instability are based on the experience of friends and colleagues, so maybe they haven’t set things up properly. If the performance of ArcGIS is only as good as the person who sets it up, please tell me what I need to do to improve the performance of an out of the box ArcMap installation and improve it’s speed when redisplaying an .ecw image!! I know that other performance issues could be improved by storing the data in SDE or file geodatabases, and by creating annotation layers (rather than using dynamic labels). But, when comparing the redisplay performance between Manifold and ArcGIS, Manifold redisplays the image, all of the data, and all of the labels (dynamic) before ArcMAP can redisplay the image, then the real wait begins after the image is displayed for the labels to regen. Of course ArcGIS Image Server would improve image redisplay in ArcMap quite a bit, but the price tag is a bit steep just to speed up ArcMap redisplay.
I’m not sure why you have reservations about using Manifold as a production system? Maybe in a very large organization with several people concurrently editing the same database you might run into a few problems, but we routinely (every day) have two people simultaneously editing the same database and have had no problems at all. We also have several people viewing the data while it is being edited; again this has caused no issues with data usability or integrity. In fact, staff prefers using Manifold for editing and database manipulation. What do you see as the big issues with using Manifold in a production environment?
I still remember all to well my frustration when I first started using Manifold. But my situation was such that I had to learn Manifold to move the GIS program forward (couldn’t afford ArcGIS). If I wasn’t forced to use Manifold, I probably would have had a similar response to your “I surely wasn’t impressed with Manifold”. It was very different from what I was used to, and at the time there was no training available for Manifold like is now available from gisadvisor.com, so I had to learn the hard way – using the manual. I’m very glad I did! Sure, Manifold has its unique problems, and different way’s of doing things, but overall it’s a great GIS software. I’m still not sure why many people think GIS software is an either/or proposition (either you use this software or that one – not both). Use what gets the job done, and what does what you need, at a price you can afford. If you have to “mix and match” software to get the job done, maybe you’ll learn something new along the way.
Hey, where is Manifold 9.0?
Probably in the trash where it belongs.
Arc You.
RSF: that all sound great, but who even knows if Manifold is actually in business anymore. I would not be surprised to hear that the reason 9 isn’t out is because they don’t have a company – only 2 or 3 people left, and there is no way to bring the product to market.
The reality is, neither you or anyone else can give any proof that this is not true. Manifold keeps its faithful in the dark.
Isn’t that the whole company (2-3 people)? It’s pretty bad when you give yourself the pink slip.
I bet Christmas parties were a blast.
if they are really 2 . It is amazing to see they have a lot of award and don’t understand when have a look to other pro gis software why they don’t support first : cuda, 64bit,direct access to osm data in vector and raster mode, MS SQL server, bug fixed release ….. any ideas ?
quantity is not quality !!
64 bit and cuda doesn’t automatically win awards. If your solutions are not effective, 64bit doesn’t mean squat. You manifold people are always talking about the backend of the program but not the solutions and the tools. Given the functionality, it cannot stand up to ArcGIS and ArcGIS Server. Until it does, don’t waste people’s time. As the old lady in the Wendy’s commercials used to say, “Where’s the BEEF!”