There are several important trends occurring in the GIS industry. The first is the growing volume of geospatial data coming from many sources. There is an increase in geographic measurement being driven by new technologies (i.e. satellite and airborne sensing, Lidar, GPS, and digital surveying) as well as by real-time sensors that are capturing data and making it available as Web services.

We also see increases in data being made available from workflows that regularly create and maintain GIS datasets (i.e., cadastral data, road information, etc.).

The use of various technologies, such as address geocoding, gazetteer referencing, and other geo-location matching techniques, is resulting in the georeferencing of nearly all types of information (tabular data, documents, photographs, CAD drawings, etc.).

GPS technology is becoming pervasive and making people increasingly aware of geospatial information. However, we see its greatest power for the GIS community in the areas of tracking assets, people, etc., and collecting professional grade survey measurements. ESRI is supporting this trend by adding more capability to directly integrate and use these various data types in its core product line.

The second trend is a growing interest in GIS services on the Web and in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment. The Web services environment offers some new and interesting opportunities for GIS users to provide greater access to their information and collaborate with others by combining (orchestrating) their services to create applications. This capability means that the information being maintained in individual GIS systems will be able to be used to create new applications by sharing data and services.

GIS on the Web tends to be easier to learn and use. As GIS becomes more available in this environment, people who are not familiar with GIS (teachers, professionals from many fields, and even citizens) will increasingly have access to knowledge previously only available to GIS specialists.

A third trend is the increasing geographic literacy of society. This is in part a direct result of the first two trends. Over time, there will be a growing demand for all of the capabilities and knowledge that GIS offers. Citizens, special interest groups, and professionals of all types will apply geography more in their thinking and behavior. In the software area, GIS continues to evolve in its mission and focus. It will continue to be a strong tool for individual productivity and projects, and also continue to expand into enterprise and society-wide applications. GIS servers will provide the framework for this.

While this trend started with software for serving maps and data on the Web, the release of ArcGIS Server 9.2 will dramatically extend this capability by providing the full power of GIS within the enterprise computing environment and on the Web. This environment “serves” the knowledge of GIS professionals in intuitive and ready to use Web clients such as ArcGIS Explorer. In terms of society-wide application of GIS, we are still only at the beginning. In the future, GIS users will build individual systems that serve their users better. This will deliver enormous benefits. Some users are starting to collaborate with other users to build new forms of Web-based systems that integrate information and services from multiple sources.

While some of this thinking is a few years out for many users, ESRI is interested in supporting our users and their work in these areas and will be building technology that is open, interoperable, and supportive of these kinds of collaborations.