IBM® and ESRI have formed a global alliance to create the world’s leading geographic information system (GIS) software, Web services, and hardware infrastructure. ESRI supplies the GIS software, Web services, and spatial data, and IBM provides the software, hardware, and services critical to making spatial applications enterprise-ready. Together, ESRI and IBM can provide GIS solutions for government and business, as well as system design, installation, and training services.

ESRI is the industry leader in geographic information system software technology. ESRI technology is used today to solve critical business problems for customers in industries such as government, utilities, retail, banking, insurance, oil and gas, transportation, and health.

IBM delivers innovation with leading information technology, project management, and systems integration capabilities necessary to enable complex end-to-end solutions. Enterprise GIS is fundamentally an information technology platform, and IBM is in a unique and leading position to help organizations drive growth and deliver more value with enterprise GIS technology.

After introducing GIS, ESRI, and IBM, this paper discusses the software and hardware components that are available to create a GIS system that meets the needs of a wide range of users. Reference URLs are provided for more details about these products and solutions. The paper concludes with a review of two enterprise customers where IBM and ESRI technologies were deployed.