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Another disadvantage is that the implementation technology is limited to the software stack ESRI provides, such as ArcIMS, ArcObject, ArcXML. These technologies, while providing powerful geospatial management and computation, currently do not have flexible and intuitive user interfaces and are difficult for many users to comfortably navigate. Handling everything with server-side technologies limits both the amount of interactivity and responsiveness of the user interface and restricts the types of problems that can be solved as the functionality delivered by the ESRI stack is determined by ESRI.
Figure 1. Existing Architecture