Esri’s ArcGIS Image technology will provide processing and analysis on imagery hosted in Azure Orbital
Microsoft and Esri join forces to deliver centralised satellite image analysis in Azure Orbital. (Credit: PIRO4D from Pixabay)
Microsoft and California-based location intelligence provider Esri have entered into a partnership to quickly analyse imagery data captured in space orbit by satellite providers.
According to Esri, today’s satellites provide huge datasets that call for complex processing, data routing, as well as storage. The company’s partnership with Microsoft is expected to help meet the increasing demand for this data.
Esri said that its ArcGIS Image technology will offer processing and analysis on imagery hosted in Azure Orbital, which is the Satellite Ground Station As a Service of Microsoft.
The company stated that location intelligence derived from satellite imagery is being used by organisations in almost all industries to boost their operations, define policy, and drive informed business decisions.
Esri global business development co-director Richard Cooke said: “The need to accelerate the delivery of insights from satellite imagery has grown as we continue to see increased urgency to respond to environmental, logistical, and natural resource challenges.
“ArcGIS Image, combined with Azure Orbital, will significantly reduce the latency from data collection to the delivery of mission-critical insights.”
Using Azure Orbital, satellite providers can directly ingest their data in Microsoft’s Azure cloud. This is said to facilitate seamless application and use of Azure services, including storage, compute, and artificial intelligence (AI) fast data processing.
Microsoft Azure Space connectivity partner director Yves Pitsch said: “No one is better suited to host and analyse the next generation of earth imagery products than Microsoft and Esri.
“ArcGIS Image and Azure Orbital, working in concert with satellite data and ground station partners, will provide accessible, focused imagery products designed for immediate use to address our customers’ mission-critical use cases.”
Esri is said to have been working together with Microsoft for more than two decades and is the latter’s geospatial technology partner. The company’s ArcGIS product suite is claimed to be integrated deeply into various Microsoft applications and services that are installed on the Azure cloud platform.
Earlier this month, the ArcGIS platform has been adopted by geospatial software and analytics company Orbital Insight for streamlining satellite and sensor imagery analysis.