Work themes at the beginning of 2026…
We just wrapped our weekly review of active and recently closed projects. What stood out—alongside a healthy near‑term pipeline—is how evenly our work is now spread across our three core services: Geospatial Strategy, Apps & Integrations, and Cloud Managed GIS. We also noticed some clear patterns in the project log.
Given that most of our clients are public agencies and utilities, I suspect some of these themes echo broader industry trends. We’d love to hear what others in this space are seeing—and whether any of this resonates.
Topo Map: Crater Lake, Oregon Environs
Maple block and leather
Cloud Stuff
Cloud Migrations Are Finally Feeling… Normal
Our cloud team completed a hefty number of ArcGIS Enterprise migrations last year, and demand is accelerating as we head into the new year. DOTs, municipalities, regional utilities, co‑ops—everyone’s moving. We’re actively migrating several environments now, with many more queued up across organizations of all sizes.
What’s striking from a strategy perspective is how different these conversations feel. Not long ago, “To cloud or not to cloud one’s ArcGIS?” was a high‑heat debate—centered on cost, security, performance, data recovery, and a dozen other concerns. Today? The temperature is way down. The conversation feels far more like stepping through a clear decision framework together. Curiosity is up. Defensiveness is down.
Cloud deployments just aren’t so exotic anymore. There’s precedent. There are playbooks. Municipal and utility GIS/IT teams now have real examples of cloud migrations that advance their mission rather than disrupt it. And with repetition, our own choreography keeps refining—leading to smoother, faster, more predictable (and often more affordable) outcomes.
With automation supporting migration steps, QA testing and validation, we’re able to deliver consistently complete, verified, high‑performance environments with far less risk and far more assurance. This new “normal” means our customers aren’t just getting rock‑solid, SLA‑backed ArcGIS Enterprise platforms—they’re getting their mapping groove back. Their teams can stay focused on delivering GIS products and insights rather than managing arcane server settings, network quirks, and infrastructure trivia.
Utility Network Migrations Are Surging—and Often Heading Cloudward
With ArcMap and the Geometric Network now on a very real clock, Utility Network migrations have picked up serious momentum. We have several underway and many more lined up—for cities big and small, utilities, parks and recreation departments, and more. And just like with cloud work, the shift in tone is striking. The era of major “UN reluctance” seems to be fading fast.
Repetition has built muscle memory. Our team has tightened the process, reduced scope where possible, and strengthened execution. Credit to Esri’s UN team as well—their tooling has improved dramatically over the last year, and UN‑migration horror stories are becoming far less common.
A quick side note: because the UN introduces branch versioning and some added geodatabase complexity, many organizations are pairing their UN migration with a move to managed cloud GIS. More and more customers are taking the opportunity to offload platform and infrastructure operations entirely—freeing their GIS teams to focus on using GIS, not managing servers and databases.
With thoughtful configuration, training, and onboarding, we expect to see a wave of newly re‑equipped utility field crews and back‑office engineers hitting the ground running with network‑intelligence tools that accelerate work and get the job done. These solutions have reached a level of maturity that’s now validated by real market demand.
Apps & Integrations Stuff
GIS-to-EAM, GIS-to-ERP, and Beyond: GIS as the Platform of Integration
In a recent workshop, one stakeholder summed it up perfectly: “GIS is one of the two platforms driving innovation in our organization.”
As we dug in, his reasoning was clear. GIS—especially powered by ArcGIS Enterprise—offers two superpowers:
Visualization that everyone can use, and
Integration capabilities that connect everything else.
When implemented thoughtfully, ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Online, Hub, and the full ecosystem of apps, dashboards, and services operate like a Grand Central Station for the organization—where workflows converge, data streams blend, systems stay in sync, and location intelligence flows out to every corner of the business.
Right now, we’re supporting several large-scale integrations across industries:
SAP-to-Esri for asset and work order management
Maximo-to-GIS for modern EAM solutions
ERP-to-ArcGIS architectures being drafted for multi-system alignment
And alongside the technical build work, our Strategy and Cloud teams are fielding growing demand for guidance on “future-proofing” ArcGIS deployments—designing with the knowledge that high-use, high-performance integrations are becoming the norm, not the exception.
What’s striking is how universal this trend is. From small utilities to large enterprise agencies, organizations are increasingly treating GIS not as a standalone system, but as the connective tissue of their digital ecosystem.
Strategy Stuff
Platform Modernization: “Future‑Proof Us!”
Our Strategy Team is hearing this request more than ever: “Future‑proof our GIS.”
Across the board, organizations are asking for help modernizing their platforms—through GIS maturity assessments, governance initiatives, technology portfolio reviews, and evaluations of their GIS product and service delivery models. The goal is consistent: simplify, strengthen, and extend their GIS so it can support more integrations, more users, and more mission-critical workflows.
As demand grows for high-performance, interconnected systems, teams want a GIS platform that’s resilient, scalable, and ready for what’s next—not one that needs to be rebuilt in three years. And that trend spans everyone we serve, from small utilities to major enterprise agencies.
Are you finding yourself regularly rethinking what it really means to “provide GIS products and services”? The answers aren’t always obvious—but that ambiguity is exactly where the interesting work lives. We love the opportunity to think forward, to anticipate how systems might need to evolve as new options, capabilities, and expectations emerge—sometimes only vaguely understood today. These are the conversations that spark meaningful change, and we love being a part of them.