Global leader in commercial high-resolution satellite imagery selects AWS to support future growth and bring an advanced machine learning framework to geospatial data analysis
SEATTLE — (BUSINESS WIRE) — November 30, 2017 — Today, Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that DigitalGlobe has gone all-in on AWS and is leveraging AWS machine learning technologies to drive deeper insights and improved responsiveness for applications such as defense and intelligence, public safety, map making and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, and navigation. DigitalGlobe, a business unit of Maxar Technologies (NYSE: MAXR; TSX: MAXR), has migrated its entire 100-petabyte imagery library to AWS, which will give its customers instant access to its vast library of geospatial images, eliminating the need to wait for tapes and disks to be retrieved for content. DigitalGlobe, its sister division Radiant Solutions, and its partner ecosystem also leverage AWS’s frameworks and tools to build machine learning applications that allow their customers to incorporate valuable geospatial information extracted from commercial satellite imagery into their work flows, enabling decisions to be made with confidence.
DigitalGlobe is leveraging AWS’s suite of machine learning capabilities, including the newly released Amazon SageMaker to easily build, train, and deploy machine learning applications. By using Amazon SageMaker’s highly scalable machine learning algorithms, DigitalGlobe can predict what images customers will request next based on their usage patterns and, as a result, intelligently tier its image library, to keep relevant imagery readily accessible in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and the remainder of its library in AWS’s lower-priced archival service, Amazon Glacier.
In addition to optimizing storage costs, DigitalGlobe’s customers gain faster access to the right images needed to extract actionable intelligence at a global scale. To enable this, DigitalGlobe built its Geospatial Big Data platform, called GBDX, on AWS to provide data curation, analysis, and delivery that helps customers answer their most challenging questions. DigitalGlobe’s new product, GBDX Notebooks, will integrate Amazon SageMaker to make it easier for customers to build and deploy machine learning models that extract data from DigitalGlobe’s vast satellite imagery library for detailed business insights.
“Adopting AWS as our foundational storage and analytics infrastructure is allowing us to solve big data challenges for our customers,” said Dr. Walter Scott, Chief Technology Officer of Maxar Technologies and founder of DigitalGlobe. “We’ve gained speed, agility, and resiliency from the cloud, and our teams, partners, and customers can now innovate faster than ever before with our entire library at their fingertips. By leveraging an array of AWS machine learning services, we are able to put the world’s most important images into our customer’s hands, allowing them to better understand our changing planet and save lives, resources, and time.”
“Few companies work with the sheer volume of data that DigitalGlobe does. When working at this volume, it’s nearly impossible to scale and rapidly innovate without the cloud,” said Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector Sales at AWS. “DigitalGlobe was the first customer to use AWS Snowmobile – AWS’s Exabyte-scale data transfer service that uses a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container pulled by a semi-trailer truck – to move their massive image library to AWS. Ever since, they have been pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with large data sets. We’ve worked in lock-step with DigitalGlobe over the last three years, listening to their challenges and collaborating with them to build an environment in the cloud where their business can thrive. ”
About Amazon Web Services
For more than 11 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 100 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, and application development, deployment, and management from 44 Availability Zones (AZs) across 16 geographic regions in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the UK. AWS services are trusted by millions of active customers around the world—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—to power their infrastructure, make them more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit https://aws.amazon.com.
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About DigitalGlobe
DigitalGlobe is the global leader in commercial high-resolution satellite imagery used by decision makers to better understand our changing planet in order to save lives, resources and time. Sourced from the world's leading constellation, our imagery solutions deliver unmatched coverage and capacity to meet our customers' most demanding mission requirements. Each day customers in defense and intelligence, public safety, civil agencies, map making and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas exploration, infrastructure management, navigation technology, and providers of location-based services depend on DigitalGlobe data, information, technology and expertise to gain actionable insight. DigitalGlobe is a business unit of Maxar Technologies, a U.S. operating company (NYSE: MAXR; TSX: MAXR). For more information, visit www.DigitalGlobe.com.
About Maxar Technologies
Maxar Technologies (formerly MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates) is a leading global provider of advanced space technology solutions for commercial and government markets including satellites, Earth imagery, geospatial data and analytics. As a trusted partner, Maxar Technologies provides unmatched end-to-end systems capabilities and integrated solutions expertise to anticipate and address our customers most complex mission critical challenges. With more than 6,500 employees in 21 locations, the Maxar Technologies portfolio of commercial space brands include: SSL, MDA, DigitalGlobe and Radiant. Every day millions of people rely on Maxar Technologies to communicate, share information and data, and deliver insights that empower a better world. Maxar trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange as MAXR. For more information, visit www.maxar.com.
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