Most of you may have heard by now, there is new desktop GIS product from Esri in our midst – ArcGIS Professional, or “ArcGIS Pro”, being the generally accepted nick-name. Targeting the desktop GIS professional, this new 64-bit product is fast, responsive, and positioned to please. Based on a modern, multi-threaded architecture, “Pro” is truly able to leverage the processing power of a capable host machine, giving new life to high intensity GIS operations. ArcGIS Professional is included as part of the recent 10.3 release of ArcGIS Desktop.
ArcGIS Professional is not an ArcMap replacement, rather an ArcMap alternative, containing a subset of present ArcMap functionality, plus a range of new capabilities. It has its own new look and feel, and may be installed alongside existing Desktop applications, ArcMap, ArcCatalog, ArcScene, and/or ArcGlobe. – Notable here, is that your existing Desktop install can remain at an earlier version, 10.1 for example, and ArcGIS Pro, fresh out of the box at 10.3, can happily co-exist installed on the same machine.