3 minute read
Thomas VanMatre
LEADERS' OUTLOOK
ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022
Make Space Science Relatable and Simple
BY THOMAS VANMATRE
Vice President, Global Business Development, Satellogic
Since the initial COVID lockdowns, budget-conscious economies have put resources behind ‘doing more with free’ data, seeing if they can derive consequential insights from more economical data sources. However, the larger economies have veered towards spending at the same rate as previous years.
At Satellogic, we have observed a voracious appetite for economical satellite imagery in every commercial and government vertical. Providers of economical data and solutions always stand to gain market share in times of budget austerity; so while COVID continues to shape budgets, we will continue to see market demand for our products and services.
Platform fatigue We continue to see everyone trying to build ‘one platform to rule them all’. This is an unfortunate trend that is only exacerbating the ‘platform fatigue’ we hear of from customers.
However, two positive trends we are seeing are around pricing transparency and API (Application Programming Interface) or SDK (Software Development Kit) strengthening. Pricing APIs will soon become normal within the Earth Observation (EO) industry, simplifying the purchasing process. Companies with customer-centric philosophies manifested in elegant API design and architecture are gaining substantial traction by allowing customers to easily integrate EO data into their work.
COVID also brought about the popularity of data dashboards, an easy way to present complicated spatial datasets, allowing the abstract to become intuitive and digestible. Dashboards play into the user experience and design evolution we are witnessing. No longer is it enough to provide data in a raw or processed state; it is incumbent upon providers to help customers easily understand the significance of the data they are seeing/buying.
The analytics ecosystem To design, build, launch, and operate satellites (no matter how small) is no easy feat. The barriers to entry in the small satellite industry are high, but with an influx of VC funding, they are coming down. In reality, Space remains an unforgiving environment in which most early-stage start-ups do not succeed. That said, the ambitious few that do succeed are pushing legacy operators to lower costs, increase agility, and become more customer-centric. Artificial intelligence/machine learning analytics firms now number in the thousands globally.
This exploding industry of analytics providers is growing the total addressable market by creating new customers, while also expanding the intellectual capital in our industry. This creates opportunities for mergers and acquisitions for larger industry players, and increases the ‘speed to insight’ for the industry customer base.
The challenges There is a massive supply shortage in quality, affordable EO data. In some areas, all the satellite capacity to produce EO data is bought up before new satellites are even launched. There is simply not enough supply to meet regional and global demand.
Further, our industry has a relatability problem. The lay person cannot relate to multispectral, hyperspectral, or synthetic aperture radar data. Outside of weather images on the local news channels, we have done a poor job of explaining data from Space. It is incumbent upon our industry to make this science simplistic.
There is no lack of demand for EO data and analytics. We are of the opinion that prolonged technology gaps or sluggish user adoption are largely driven by poor storytelling, marketing, and product development. It is the industry that must adapt to meet the needs of the customer (no matter what the state of technology), not the other way around.
