Esri unveils ArcGIS Server 10 on Amazon EC2

Concurrent with the release of ArcGIS 10, Esri has made ArcGIS Server 10 available to customers via Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

"ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2 gives customers another option for deploying ArcGIS Server," explains Ismael Chivite, product manager for ArcGIS Server. "Essentially, ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2 will reduce the complexity of software deployments for many organizations. Instead of installing and maintaining local instances of ArcGIS Server on premises, customers can launch ArcGIS Server on EC2 instances with ArcGIS Server preconfigured for them. These ArcGIS Server instances run on machines hosted in the Amazon cloud infrastructure but can be administered as if they are local servers."

In addition to simplifying deployment, ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2 provides an ideal environment for scaling a geographic information system (GIS) to support compute-intensive GIS tasks, providing virtually unlimited computing power for jobs such as sophisticated GIS analysis and large batch geocoding. With an Esri enterprise license agreement (ELA), customers can take advantage of Amazon’s elastic computing infrastructure and deploy unlimited ArcGIS Server instances to handle peak load situations and scale back as demand dissipates.
Support for ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2 includes

    * A virtual image of GIS services, which include ArcGIS Server, SQL Server Express, and ArcGIS Desktop software
    * ArcGIS Enterprise Geodatabase—A virtual image of an enterprise geodatabase running on PostgreSQL
    * Esri technical support including best practice documentation and tutorials

Esri Developer Network (EDN) developers will find that ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2 is an excellent way to rapidly launch ideas for proofs of concept and testing of applications for online deployment. Once the requirements are met, the Amazon EC2 instances can be thrown away, thus limiting costs to only those for the hardware used.

“Amazon Web Services is excited that Esri is now offering the ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2 to organizations around the world,” said Terry Wise, director of business development, Amazon Web Services LLC. “This new offering leverages the scalability, security and utility based pricing model of Amazon EC2, enabling Esri customers to deploy critical spatial data and GIS servers within minutes without having to go through the time and expense of procuring, deploying and managing in-elastic compute resources.”

For more information about ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2, contact Esri Customer Service. Outside the United States, contact your local Esri distributor. For a current distributor list, visit ESRI Distributors.