Esri in Redlands, California offers ArcGIS, a geographic information system.
$100
per year
Surfer
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Surfer is a data visualization suite from Golden Software in Colorado for oil and gas companies, or other entities in other industries requiring geological or environmental data.
There's really no competitor to ArcGIS. The software was really the first to get into advanced geographic analysis and has kept that lead through today. The software does everything that any other geographic analytics tool attempts to do and then some. Some tools offer …
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
Surfer has been excellent for us, a small company, to process the electrical resistivity, refraction microtremor, and MASW data collected in the field. There are an increasing number of programs capable of assisting in this geophysical analysis but Surfer is the most advanced. The ability to create both 2D and 3D figures in the program while managing data is a huge help. It also greatly improved report quality and helped clients better understand what the results were for a study.
The user interface can be tricky at first. It's a little rough around the edges and takes a little time to get the hang of.
Not an ideal application for older employees. There are too many things with the interface that make it not worthwhile to train employees with less computer experience.
Manipulating data within Surfer is difficult because you have to do things in a certain order. Not terrible if you get the hang of it but certainly frustrating at first.
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.
Surfer is very unique with respect to its capabilities. I am not aware of any other mapping software that is at the same time flexible, has a friendly interface, and creates such nice-looking maps.
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.
The worst thing about Surfer is the cost. My company can only afford one license at the moment which means only one employee gets to use it regularly. Not so great when someone is sick or you have a huge wave of projects.
The user interface is a little rough but younger employees have been great at catching on quickly and producing great images.
There's nothing else quite like Surfer. It's versatile and not to difficult to use so, though the licenses are expensive, it is an excellent program that has done wonders for our company!
