Hosted Processing: A Commercial Value-Adder’s Perspective

1. Hosted Processing:A Commercial Value-Adder’s Perspective Nick Veck Infoterra & GSE Respond Project Prime USNG User Workshop

2. Hosted processes & service chaining A personal view, from a leading EO organisation’s (double) perspective… • A Commercial Value-adding Company / Reseller (VAC/VAR): • Infoterra Ltd. • A GMES project/service in Humanitarian and Emergency mapping: • Respond; • Emergency Response Core Service (SAFER). • I don’t talk about “users”. • I am not a “user” of EO, I am a customer. • My services do not have “users”, • They have customers! USNG User Workshop

3. Service Chaining – Benefits? USNG Approach builds on work of SSE and G-POD: SSE typically an off-line service, where a request is sent to the VAC “host” and then the result/product is produced in their own time prior to delivery to the client. “Hosted Processing” Provides an “on-line” service availability, where products and services can be added/applied and delivered to the client in a “semi-automatic” fashion, through one central portal; potential to use a variety of processing services and functions, through direct promotion and location in one central archive/portal; increasing awareness and access to services, such as toolkits, VA products, etc. Direct access to online derived services; Direct access to processing services; VAP/Derived VAP/Information services, etc. ESA-Esrin 19-06-2008 USNG User Workshop 3

4. What’s the VAC business environment? • In each market, there are customers (who pay!), a supply chain and what could be referred to as “natural suppliers” for services; • The support services need to be aligned with the market sector and with knowledge of the issues, priorities, language and appropriate businessmodel of that sector. • These considerations advocate de-centralised support, to address the breadth of market-sector knowledge needed to provide premier customer support, whilst there remains the opportunity to centralise access. • The de-centralisation of services (particularly support and technical help) increases in importance when considering the global nature of the client base.

5. What’s the GMES business environment? • ESA encouragement for VACs to operate in an “Open Service Partnership”; • GMES Core services involve vast numbers (30-50) partners in a single project: • Need to share data and processing capacity; • Service delivery must be validated; • All embedded processing must be validated; • INSPIRE protocols, formats etc. to be used. • GMES Downstream services are proposed, but currently there is no business model; • Volumes (of data and derived production) are increasing; • Inter-operability and the “fit” to GMES customers’ own systems are vitally important.

6. What’s important for a good service? – re-cap Critical factors to ensure the service performance (applicable to both environments): • Attainment of delivery commitments & SLA response; • 24/7 and NRT Services (sometimes); • Customer Services ethic; • Management of IPR; • Breadth of service offering; • e-commerce services; • Efficient financial, billing and subscription services; • Certification/Validation of Products and Services (occasionally); • Product guarantees, assurance and insurance. Meeting these factors helps lead to a competitive market environment, to improve on geo-information supply from other (non-EO) sources.

7. So can USNG help? • In general, VACs/VARs have a potential interest in hosted processing in the USNG, as it would enable them to promote their services, processing and algorithms through one centralised environment. • However, where things are hosted may be a key consideration. The service may be hosted by ESA, third parties or individual VARs (or a mixture), • From a general perspective, service chaining may be an advantageous scenario, providing easy access to many processing functions and product opportunities: • A centralised system, where hosted services are away from the VARs’ own resources is an interesting idea and for some VARscould potentially be useful; • However, in this hypothesis, the critical issues of IPR and data and derived product policies must be addressed properly, in order to overcome the concerns of most VARs; • VARs must be able to maintain the property and control of their own application, and to obtain royalties and/or fees through the system.

8. IPR issues • IPR and Data & Derived-product Policy • IPR/data and product policy management must be a priority, to ensure that existing and potential agreements are not breached; • Technical solutions that enforce controlled access (with associated billing, when appropriate) to the services have been suggested to provide a guarantee for VARs; • However, ESA are sometimes considered to be more “scientific” and are perceived by VARs, up to this point, not to concern themselves with these sensitive issues; • It therefore becomes difficult for VARs to assess how much (if at all) of an issue this will be and so its likely to still be a major concern, despite the proposed technical solutions to this problem. Whilst the current infrastructures of ESA’s SSE and G-POD provide some examples of how hosted-processing might work, at this stage, IPR and data policy issues are not comprehensively covered by these infrastructures.

9. How could it be used?A possible simple example in GMES Emergency Core Service: Respond – Flood maps (1) Use of a relatively simple algorithm / process, to extract a land/water boundary, using optical data. USNG User Workshop

10. A possible example in GMES:Flood maps (2) Use of a relatively simple algorithm / process, to extract a land/water boundary: - Radar data. ESA-Esrin 19-06-2008 USNG User Workshop 10

11. A possible example in GMES:Flood maps (3) The resultant flood map, derived from ERS SAR data.

12. SSE Example:TerraFirma PSI Methodology No e-commerce, off-line process USNG User Workshop

13. Service chaining – TerraFirma example Input Processing Output GeoTIFF Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) Level 0 - Raw SLC processing Database Level 1- ESA SLC Google Earth (kmz) ESA-Esrin 19-06-2008 USNG User Workshop 13

14. Another SSE Process - Meteorology USNG User Workshop

15. A potential application? Input Processing Output GeoTIFF Raw Data Database Graph USNG User Workshop

16. Or perhaps, in Oceanography: Input Processing Output Processing to Level 2B for a-Chlorophyll concentrations GeoTIFF Raw Data Database Graph USNG User Workshop

17. A VA Perspective • Current view: • T his is a good idea, but it needs to be properly integrated with today’s and tomorrow’s business models; • service chaining already exists, but it’s an un-paid service – there is no e-commerce on SSE; • May be good for service promotion? eg. in GMES; • Provides access to a variety of simple functions (without impinging on the VA work as consultants and contact points for the customers), perhaps as a separate access point to some of the more generic services; • Next generation thinking, and innovative ideas: • New technologies and services provide an opportunity for change; • May potentially widen the scope of products and services that can be directly offered from satellite EO. USNG User Workshop

18. Summary thoughts • There are potential applications for hosted-processing. • VACs/VARs would use a hosted-processing infrastructure, (only) if they perceive that it will help their bottom line: • There must be a way of making money from this (or saving costs); • There must be an e-commerce capability of some kind; • The algorithms, etc. must be certified, guaranteed and validated; • Recognition of royalties, licencing, and receipt of fees is paramount. • Perhaps it mat be more applicable for GMES Core (and Downstream?) services, than for “purely commercial” applications? • Technically, it all seems feasible, but there are business issues: • Human intervention is often needed for quality products; • IPR, data and derived-product policies must be appropriate; • Validation of algorithms is necessary; • Downstream access to markets must be maintained. USNG User Workshop

19. Thank you! Nick Veck Infoterra & GSE Respond Project Prime ESA-Esrin 19-06-2008 USNG User Workshop