Esri in Redlands, California offers ArcGIS, a geographic information system.
$100
per year
Cisco Spaces
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Spaces is a cloud platform that connects people and things with spaces to transform buildings into smart spaces. Using Cisco devices as sensors (Catalyst, Meraki, Webex) and the Spaces ecosystem, the aim is to make buildings safe, smart, sustainable, and seamless. Currently the platform has digitized 193,781+ buildings, 72,836+ devices and has over 8,000+ global enterprise customers.
We utilize ArcGIS for each of our units. For example, we just completed our unit on the Middle Ages and are starting our unit on the Renaissance. There is a GeoInquiry that has students manipulate a map to not only see but understand the spread of the plague. They can toggle on and off different layers and icons to see how deadly the plague truly was, and how it led to the rebirth of Europe
Cisco Spaces is well suited from Small businesses to large businesses. The ability for Cisco Spaces to scale as your business scale is an important feature to leverage, especially for small businesses. The insights for the Cisco Spaces are helpful to the organization with utilizing what access points we have where and what load the access points are taking on. Our business also likes the fact that the switches, access points, and other Cisco equipment can be seen all in one, anywhere anytime. This makes it easier to manage our equipment.
So the first thing it does really well is a lot of our sites are rural, so we don't have very good cellular connectivity. So we invested in this product because we want our clients, our customers that are coming in to be able to walk in and be able to use a our wireless infrastructure just like it was a cellular device. So they don't even know, they walk in, they think, man, my cellular's better right now. I can do all the things that I wanna do. I can do video. And they don't even know. So that's the biggest bonus for us.
I would say out-of-the-box plugins. It's very easy to make it for DNA spaces, but I'd love to see more part more companies partner with them so that the plugins are just available to add on right out of the box. You don't have to work with a vendor and say, "Hey, I need you to come in and develop this API", it's already there. That would be the one thing that I would say that could get a little bit more help with.
Simply because the program deserves it. It seems to me that it is a fundamental tool for the storage, analysis, and interpretation of medium and large-scale phenomena, unmanageable with traditional engineering software. Its versatility in the handling of the different "layers" with which the data is handled and interpolation tools, make this software a powerful ally both for companies and for the educational part of the universities.
Once set up, the tools are extremely easy to use. I had a staff member develop a tool for field data collection, that included an external and internal dashboards to monitor progress in days. The field workers that collected the data, barely knew how to use a computer, and within minutes they could use the application that was configured for them.
Unlike other platforms (ex: EMSI), there is no "help desk" new users can easily call into for troubleshooting or errors, and so you have to spend LOTS of time trying workarounds. This is also because the help center blog posts are usually pretty confusing, and many times do not include images or videos to help you along. Any such changes would be immensely useful!
ArcGIS and QGIS have a lot of similarities between their products. Where ArcGIS stands out is with their online version of their software. ArcGIS's online solution will pair up with your on-prem solution to offer a fully synchronized system. I wasn't able to duplicate the efforts with QGIS's products and it also requires other 3rd party applications to offer something "somewhat" comparable.
Cisco DNA Spaces is the next iteration for CMX. CMX is be retired and the move to Spaces was just a next step for us. All the features in CMX are present in Spaces. As well as additional features and capabilities.
ArcGIS is almost assuredly a positive ROI. The software is nicely packaged with a large user base. If you plan on doing geographic analysis and think there could be a boost to your bottom-line by doing geographic analysis, ArcGIS is the first tool I would turn to.
For some analysts that just want to geocode addresses and plot city, county, or country boundaries, ArcGIS is a negative ROI. There are lots of other tools (free ones) that will accomplish these tasks without investing lots of time and money in ArcGIS. If that's all you're looking for, ArcGIS will turn out to be a negative ROI.
ArcGIS has been a positive ROI for cases involving customer analytics. The software is great for geofencing customers and finding the most optimal targeting of customers.
