HomeMy WebLinkAbout0008_1_ESRI Agreement - SRReport to City Council
To:Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
From:Grant Yates, City Manager
Prepared by: Jason Simpson, Assistant City Manager
Date:February 14, 2017
Subject:Three-Year Agreement with Environmental Systems Research Institute
(ESRI) for Geographic Information System (GIS) to an Enterprise Software
License Agreement
Recommendation
Authorize the City Manager to execute the agreement on an unlimited basis including
maintenance for the firm, three-year commitment in the annual amount of $50,500, totaling
$151,500.00.
Background and Discussion
The City of Lake Elsinore has been using ArcGIS products from Environmental Systems
Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) to manage its GIS service needs since 2006. These products
consist of desktop applications, which provide one user with the ability to create, edit and publish
maps, as well as limited, online storage of published content. This enables the City to provide
useful, though limited maps and associated statistical content to its staff and its citizens.
These ArcGIS products require the City to pay an annual maintenance fee of roughly $26,000
dollars for their continued use. This fee also provides for ten thousand online service credits from
ESRI, which enable the City to publish a limited amount of cloud-based, online content to the
ESRI servers. The cost to create and publish content to the ESRI servers fluctuates, depending
on factors such as the amount and types of the content published. For this reason, it has become
difficult to satisfy the needs of all of the various departments / systems that rely on the published
GIS data, making it advantageous for the City to upgrade its current GIS environment. Licensing
new ArcGIS products from ESRI will enable the city to host its own GIS environment in-house,
thus, reducing the need to rely on ESRI for this hosting service.
The City has encountered a number of obstacles to its recent EnerGov, land management
software system implementation related to the limitations inherent in our current GIS environment,
which is unable to generate the content needed in a timely manner, nor do we have the sufficient
service credits to store that content for staff and public consumption. The City currently has a
limited number of licenses for ArcGIS products, which are loaded onto one or more desktop
computers. Authorized City staff can use these desktop products to produce new content or edit
existing maps, as well as perform statistical analysis on its geodata but all content produced by
staff is stored on ESRI servers. The City pays ESRI in “service credits” to store its content, as well
as perform any sort of statistical analysis against stored content hosted by ESRI in the cloud.
ESRI License Agreement
February 14, 2017
Page 2
ESRI charges ten cents ($0.10) for each service credit. The City receives ten thousand service
credits with its annual software maintenance renewal. These credits expire at the end of the year
if they are not used. Much of the desired GIS work remains incomplete because staff have been
trying to minimize unexpected, additional charges. This has had a direct impact on the City’s
ability to serve timely, relevant GIS data to the EnerGov land management system and city
customers.
City staff, along with GIS consultants, recently met with the account services team from ESRI, in
order to identify all of the GIS options available to the City. We recommend the ArcGIS, Small
Government Enterprise Option, which would enable the city to satisfy its immediate GIS needs,
as well as to provide for their expected long-term growth.
In order to facilitate this change, the City will need to restructure the manner in which it utilizes
the ArcGIS products. The City should license an Enterprise version of the ArcGIS software, which
will enable the City to host its own GIS environment in-house, on its own servers and in its own
network environment. This will eliminate the need to publish data to the ESRI servers for the City’s
everyday GIS use.
By hosting its own GIS environment, it will enable the City to control its own GIS destiny, fix the
costs for all GIS utilization and provide far more usable content in a timelier manner to its staff
and citizens.
The ArcGIS Small Government Enterprise Agreement option includes licensing for an unlimited
number of server instances, along with five hundred user licenses. ArcGIS Online is a cloud-
based repository for any content that needs publishing for wider consumption. It also includes a
host of applications for publishing maps and performing analytical analysis of geodata.
Fiscal Impact
The Information Systems Internal Services Fund has funding available for the $151,500 to
implement this agreement for the three-year period.
Exhibits
A. ESRI License Agreement