Your correct, ESRI tools are a de facto standard for map creation. However when your doing dynamic map creation or real time situational awareness the ESRI tools perform poorly. There are better commercial products on the market and free oss tools available such as OpenSceneGraph with the OSGEarth plugin.

Their tools are also a gigantic pain in the ass. (Note: things are improving, thanks to the power of competition!)

I've thought very strongly about having a standard policy of upping my bill rate 50% if I'm doing ArcObjects code. :)

OT but the phrase you're looking for is the latin de facto .