ESRI offers access to premium imagery data through ArcGIS online services

ESRI now offers access to new premium map service through ArcGIS Online. The i-cubed's Nationwide Prime 1-meter or better resolution imagery for the continental Unite States is included in USA premium map service. i-cubed's 15 meter eSAT Imagery at medium-to-large scales and the NASA Blue Marbel: Next generation 500-meter resolution imagery at small scales -are also included with the USA premimum map service. Now ArcGIS Users can leverage the 2D maps and 3D globe services of i-cubed for authoring and publishing maps and perform situational analysis. Along with premium imagery, ArcGIS online gives users access to street maps, topographic maps and shaded relief maps.

"We believe that a high-resolution online imagery service like Nationwide Prime, which is updated quarterly with the latest commercial and publicly available data, will give ArcGIS users an invaluable base for a wide variety of GIS projects and applications," said Andrew Pitcairn, i-cubed's senior director, strategic sales

This is very good news for the GIS community because now ArcGIS is the one stop shop for high resolution and most updated imagery data along with access to the Microsoft Virtual Earths hybrid imagery(See http://www.geospatialnews.com/2008/09/microsoft-virtual-earth-now-accessible.html). This is an invaluable feature for anyone who is building turn key GIS Solutions that requires high resolution and more importantly the latest imagery data. What makes it so invaluable is the the clients don't to have waste a lot of time on findinig,storing and maintaining the data because now its all maintained by ESRI. It really cut lot of costs because there is no more hussle with data storage and maintainence.

"By helping to provide ArcGIS users with consistently updated, high-quality commercial imagery of the United States, i-cubed has been an important partner in delivering premier imagery for projects requiring such basemaps," said Rob Shanks, senior product manager for the ArcGIS Online program at ESRI.

For more information on ArcGIS Online visit www.esri.com/arcgisonlineservices.