Conference Will Offer Solutions for Optimizing Business Functions for Organizations of Any Size

Redlands, California—April 23, 2009—ESRI announces the Business GIS Summit will coincide with the ESRI International User Conference (ESRI UC) at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California, in July. This will allow ESRI to open its resources to the wider business geographic information system (GIS) community and help the entire ESRI user base learn from and apply the business benefits and process improvement strategies common to commercial-sector GIS users. Attendees of the ESRI UC and Business GIS Summit will be able to share experiences and best practices while taking advantage of the wealth of information and technical knowledge that has made both events so popular.

"As we have been talking to businesses throughout the year, many of them have expressed concerns regarding travel budgets," says Simon Thompson, commercial business industry manager, ESRI. "Users in government, utilities, and other fields have also wanted access to the experience and knowledge of successful commercial GIS implementations. We feel that bringing these two events together will provide an unprecedented opportunity to share knowledge across communities and give each group a bigger perspective of how GIS is used around the world to improve business performance and provide answers to the challenges that we see today."

Business GIS Summit participants will be able to take part in the ESRI UC experience, which will give them the opportunity to meet leaders from other industries. They can also spend one-on-one time with ESRI product and development staff and choose from more than 300 additional user presentations and technical workshops to attend. "By providing this combined experience, our business users will have the opportunity to bring additional technical, marketing, and executive staff to one single event for the most synergistic experience. They will also see how GIS is used in many different organizations and industries for a variety of tasks," says Mike Johnson, commercial sales manager, ESRI.

The Business GIS Summit begins on Sunday, July 12, with an afternoon Plenary Session and the evening's EXPO social with dedicated exhibitors, followed by the ESRI UC Plenary Session on Monday. Commercial business sessions and workshops will be presented on Tuesday and Wednesday, July 14 and 15.

The Business GIS Summit is open to everyone in the business community, ESRI users and nonusers alike. It is recognized as an excellent venue for commercial organizations, both large and small, to learn more about using GIS software and data to address business needs more effectively and jump-start their adoption of geoextended applications. For more information on the summit and to register, visit www.esri.com/bizsummit.

About ESRI

Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.


Contact:

Karen Richardson
ESRI
Tel.: 909-793-2853, extension 1-3491
E-mail: Email Contact