Esri vs HERE Technologies

Grocery TV and Esri Partner for Data-Driven In-Store Media

Grocery TV announced a partnership with Esri to integrate Esri’s Market Potential dataset into Grocery TV’s in-store retail media platform. The integration adds more than 3,500 behavioral and psychographic audience attributes across Grocery TV’s national network of 6,700+ grocery stores, enabling brands and agencies to plan in-store buys against audience segments similar to TV and digital planning. Grocery TV says it works with 120+ retail partners and reaches 95 million unique shoppers. Esri and Grocery TV frame the collaboration as bringing location intelligence and local consumer behavior insights into in-store media planning as the channel scales.

• Grocery TV announced a partnership with Esri to enhance behavioral and psychographic targeting in in-store retail media.
• The integration incorporates over 3,500 audience attributes via Esri’s Market Potential dataset across Grocery TV’s 6,700+ store network.
• Grocery TV reports more than 120 retail partners and reach to 95 million unique shoppers.

Microsoft Fabric Apps: Distribution Channel, Not Marketplace

The article argues Microsoft Fabric custom workloads (built with the Fabric Workload Dev Kit) should be treated as a distribution channel rather than a traditional app marketplace listing. Fabric workloads render inside the Fabric shell, operate on OneLake Delta tables, and authenticate via Microsoft Entra ID while backend compute remains on the vendor's infrastructure. That proximity to customer data can materially reduce procurement friction for data-adjacent ISVs, but introduces risks: entanglement with Microsoft's capacity-unit (CU) pricing and potential commoditization by first‑party Microsoft features. The author provides a 90-day, three-step evaluation framework (prototype, CU economics modeling, design‑partner validation) and recommends building on Fabric only when a product's value compounds by sitting next to customer OneLake data.

• The Fabric Workload Development Kit went generally available at Ignite 2024 and enables registering custom workload item types that render inside the Fabric shell.
• Fabric workloads access customer data in OneLake (Delta Lake tables/Parquet) and authenticate via Microsoft Entra ID using on‑behalf‑of tokens while backend compute runs on the ISV's infrastructure.
• Microsoft stated at Build 2024 that more than 11,000 organizations use Fabric; Ignite 2024 launch partners named include Esri, SAS, Informatica, and Teradata.

Introducing the AI Assistant (Beta) on Esri.com

Esri announces the beta release of an AI Assistant on Esri.com, providing users with AI-powered assistance for navigating products and resources.

HERE and Esri Announce 3-Year Location Analytics Partnership

HERE Technologies and Esri announced a three-year agreement to jointly develop location-based analytics and visualization solutions built on Esri’s ArcGIS platform. The collaboration combines HERE’s map, traffic and mobility data with ArcGIS spatial analytics to make live and historical geospatial data more accessible to engineering teams and AI systems, supporting emerging AI use cases and agentic workflows. The deal extends a long-standing, 20+ year relationship and references HERE’s 2025 launch of the HERE GIS Data Suite as a curated dataset for ArcGIS environments.

• HERE Technologies and Esri announced a 3-year agreement to jointly develop location-based analytics and visualization solutions.
• The partnership combines HERE’s map, traffic and mobility data with Esri’s ArcGIS platform to enable access to live and historical geospatial data for engineering teams and AI systems.
• The agreement expands and deepens a long-term, 20+ year location data partnership between the two companies.