An entire track is devoted to discussing the direction ESRI software is headed, and the sessions give users a chance to hear and discuss what is coming next with ESRI product developers.

An opportunity to hear about the future of GIS in cloud computing directly from ESRI development teams is one of the special rewards of participating in UC. On Tuesday, Rob Shanks, ArcGIS Online product manager, and Deane Kensok, ArcGIS Online program manager, talked about dreams and schemes, and some reality as well, for ArcGIS Online, ESRI's platform for building a GIS on the Web.  One of the most significant things about ArcGIS Online is that it allows users to upload maps and layer packages to the Web to share within a community and also control access to them. The idea is to make ready-to-use content from ESRI, commercial data vendors, and other ArcGIS users  available for collaboration and information sharing.

According to Shanks, the vision of the future ArcGIS Online is to provide cloud-based software and services, hosted user storage, and access to GIS tools, imagery, and databases. Through ArcGIS Online, ESRI is already making available worldwide imagery at 15-meter resolution or better and imagery for several major metropolitan areas worldwide at 1-meter resolution. According to Kensock, a collection of maps based on variables selected from 2009 ESRI Updated demographic data will be available in July, with more coming soon. In addition, the technology is currently migrating to the Bing Maps/Google Maps tiling scheme to better support mashups.

New plans for GIS tools include ArcGIS locator services for geocoding and multipoint routing using Network Analyst. Those who need to provide audio driving directions with their routing applications should be happy to hear that other language choices in addition to English are in the works.

To find out more about ArcGIS Online, visit the ArcGIS Online island in the ESRI Product Showcase, Exhibit Hall C,  during UC or go to www.esri.com/arcgisonline. To join ArcGIS Online Sharing, visit www.arcgisonline.com.

A repeat session of ArcGIS Online Plans will be offered on Thursday, July 16, at 10:15 a.m. in Room 6B.