Most organizations invest in GIS Analysts who understand the business, can manage data, make operational maps and respond to business requests. They understand what the organization does, the goals and tactics; and they support business development, planning, construction, permitting or emergency response.
What about managing the GIS servers, infrastructure and web maps? Applying critical security patches, adding memory to a server or planning a Cloud migration are not usually part of the typical skill set of the GIS Analyst. Someone needs to be responsible for this scope, although not every enterprise wants or needs the overhead of a full-time GIS Architect with the skills to install, configure, upgrade, patch and migrate your Enterprise GIS. These tasks are required to ensure a healthy and robust Enterprise GIS environment for the GIS Analyst and business community to operate efficiently although, is the overhead worth the investment in a full-time resource for these tasks alone? If not, how easy is it to find a GIS Analyst with these skills? Or a GIS Architect that knows your data and operations? Difficult proposition.
Some organizations choose to outsource this “IT” side of their Enterprise GIS to 3rd parties who maintain the infrastructure and do not require business specific GIS Analyst skill sets. The term “Enterprise GIS Managed Services” has become a catch all term to describe this function.
Enterprise GIS Managed Services are usually provided by specialized organizations who handle the “back office” Enterprise GIS, leaving your GIS Analysts free to focus on value-oriented business activities. Each provider defines the offering a bit differently, although they intend to monitor your Enterprise GIS, recover servers and services if they “go down”, provide feedback regarding increasing server compute resources as your system and user base grows and, finally, provide patching and upgrades based on some agreed upon schedule or service level agreement.
We’ve observed an industry trend where the GIS Managed Services providers drive clients into a hosted environment and then “lock down” the Enterprise GIS backend – ostensibly to the make the environment “easier” for the provider to manage – although this constraint is now passed on to the client. To be hosted on the service provider’s environment, the client will incur the overhead to migrate their users, data, services and apps to the new environment and contend with new security and integration protocols. After the migration, the newly imposed lack of backend control equates to difficulty or lack of ability to publish services and author maps and apps. This lack of fine-level control of your Enterprise GIS may work for some, although it does not work for everyone.
LOGIC has a different philosophy when it comes to Enterprise GIS Managed Services. Instead of locking clients into our hosted environment with its additional logins and security hurdles, LOGIC leverages your existing on premises servers or Cloud environment as is, in place – “Bring Your Own Environment”. With this approach, there is no need to migrate or incur the expense and overhead that comes with it. And, instead of locking down the environment so only the service provider can control it, LOGIC provides a balanced approach empowering clients to question, push and uncover new capabilities and answers…from their own system.
With this approach, no need to put in a ticket or request to leverage the full power of your own Enterprise GIS. Instead, allow users to publish services, maps and apps, leading to insight and breakthroughs for the organization.
LOGIC invites full access and participation in leveraging the power of your Enterprise GIS as part of our Enterprise GIS Manages Services offering. If this is of interest, give us a call to discuss.
