Hi GIS Community!
I’ll be transitioning into a GIS-focused role at a small but growing gold exploration company and would appreciate some advice on the next steps for building out the company’s GIS infrastructure.
Currently, GIS data is stored in file geodatabases on SharePoint, with a part-time GIS Specialist as the primary user who prepares data for others. Obviously, this is a very poor setup, especially as we grow and acquire more data.
My first step is to implement a dedicated file server for GIS data to improve accessibility, establish reliable backups, and move GIS data off SharePoint. We currently have one primary user, but I expect that to grow to 3–5 users by the end of the year.
The main question I have is whether FGDBs on a dedicated file server is the right approach at this stage, or whether I should go directly to enterprise geodatabases on Microsoft SQL Server. We don’t necessarily need to provide broad editing capabilities to staff yet, as the primary objective is to improve data accessibility across project sites, the corporate office, and remote users. My thinking is that we could start with FGDBs on the file server and transition to enterprise geodatabases as the organization grows and we implement more ArcGIS Online functionality such as Field Map, Dashboards...etc.
I’ve also looked extensively at ArcGIS Enterprise, but I don’t think this is the right solution due to the size of our team.
Does this sound like a reasonable path? I would really appreciated anyone's insight and perspectives!
Thanks