Working at an IT platform team in a company that has quite some assets and customers. Quite some users in the company want to visualize where assets/customers are and were asking which tool to use. We have PowerBI and ArcGIS Online/Enterprise, and wanted to advice users which mapping tool they should use in which case. Right now people are more used to using PowerBI. We saw several nice geographical visualization options in PowerBI and ArcGIS:
Overview below was last updated on 28 May 2024. Will try to keep the overview below updated.
| Visualization option | Advantage | Disadvantage |
Azure Maps (docs) | - Visualizes points (latitude, longitude) on a nice map - Visualizes regions (e.g. municipality) - Visualizes heat map - Has reference/tile/traffic layer - Nice integrated and clean developer experience - Simple user interface - Supports up to 30,000 data points - Maintained by Microsoft | - Does not easily allow to visualize complex geometries - Does not allow multiple geometry file formats - Does not allow multiple coordinate systems - Sharing location data to USA is not GDPR compliant for Europe (source) |
| ArcGIS Maps in PowerBI (docs) | - Select locations to highlight features - Search for a specific address - Add reference layers - Find locations within a radius - Allows raster layers and feature layers - Allows complex geometries - Extensive user interface - Allows multiple coordinate systems | - Developer experience is bit complexer - Requires ArcGIS Account for full functionality - Requires uploading data to ArcGIS for some functionality - Maintained by ESRI. PowerBI is not their core software platform. |
| Icon Maps (docs) | - Icon Map is based on Leaflet which is an open source library to create interactive maps, which has all geographical visualization options. | - Icon Map is not supported by Microsoft and is maintained by individual developer. |
| (Shape) maps (docs) | | - Deprecated in May 2024 and replaced by Azure Map |
| Filled Maps (docs) | | - Deprecated in May 2024 and replaced by Azure Map |
| ArcGIS Online (docs) | - All advantages of ArcGIS Map in PowerBI - Allows layers/maps to be easily shared as a service - Allows apps/dashboards to be created on top of layers/maps quite easily | - Requires ArcGIS Account - Requires uploading data to ArcGIS |
Found nice video with comparison from last year by SQL Bits (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z20HkTFI750).
Do people have more recommendations when to use which mapping software when you have PowerBI and ArcGIS?
