Field notes from the engineers moving utilities onto the Utility Network — plus the industry shifts, standards, and trends shaping where utility GIS is heading.
The honest breakdown of what an ArcGIS Utility Network migration really costs a utility your size — what's genuine spend, what you already own, and why most quotes price a solved problem as if it were a mystery.
One of the most common questions we hear from electric utilities is: "Which data model should we start with?" The short answer is that it matters far less than you think. The Utility Network is a platform, the Foundation and partner packages are just configurations on top of it — and whichever you pick, you'll reshape it anyway. Here's how to choose the starting line without mistaking it for the finish.
Esri's materials suggest a 3–6 month Utility Network migration. In reality most utilities take 12–18 months, and the established partners are spending years per project. It may sound like a hot take, but it's really a simple math problem — and the math says something has to change. Here's the throughput gap, the complexity trap that created it, and the lens that gets you live in months instead of years.