The Struggle of Time and Technology.docx · Web viewIn 1992, a young fledgling company emerged into the market of remote sensing and Earth observation under the name WorldView Imaging

The Struggle of Time and Technology

An investigative look at DigitalGlobes’ technology challenges

BA 617 The Struggle of Time and Technology

I. Company History

In 1992, a young fledgling company emerged into the market of remote sensing and Earth

observation under the name WorldView Imaging Corporation and right out of the gates this company

decided to go the route of contracting with the government in an attempt to rise to the top. This

contract that was signed ended up being the first license allowing a private enterprise to build and

operate a satellite system to gather high resolution digital imagery of the Earth for commercial sale. To

further assist WorldView, the company soon merged with Ball Aerospace which soon led to the

development of the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite at the time; QuickBird. In 2002,

WorldView changed its name to Digitalglobe (DG) so that the company name would more accurately

reflect the goals to create a virtual digital globe. Now that they were able to start capturing and

processing data for customers, it was time to start growing the business and they did just that by

winning a contract from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) for 500 million dollars. With

the newly awarded government contract, DG decided that is was going to build 2, next generation, ultra

high resolution imagery satellites called WorldView 1 and WorldView 2. The next major step that DG

saw was in late 2008 when they announced a number of major agreements expanding the availability of

high-resolution imagery to online portal, navigation and enterprise applications. The first of these was

the extension of its service agreement with Google to provide high-resolution satellite imagery for

Google Maps and Google Earth. This agreement marked the continuation of Google and DigitalGlobe’s

relationship to pioneer wider accessibility of global imagery started back in 2002. The second was a new

partnership with Microsoft under which DigitalGlobe would provide high-resolution satellite and aerial

imagery for the Virtual Earth Platform. Finally they needed one pivotal piece to their infrastructure so

that they could distribute this data in a manner so that customers could have readily available access to

this imagery and that piece fell with Oracle databases. By supporting their colossal suite of data with

11g database technology from Oracle, it would provide an efficient, fast way of searching for data that 2


the customers were demanding.

The most recent news came on January 31st, 2013, when the announcement was made that

DigitalGlobe and GeoEye, two leading providers of earth observation and geospatial analysis, had

finalized their combination into one company. This combination was done with an eye toward building

an organization that would provide a more comprehensive suite of geospatial information products and

services to help customers solve an increasingly complex array of problems. The combined DigitalGlobe

(DG) was now positioned to provide a wider range of imagery, information, and advanced analysis

capabilities that could help the customers solve their most complex problems, enabling them to save

time, money, and lives. With a growing suite of services, stronger financial stability, and the

knowledge/expertise of some of the world’s best geospatial production and analysis professionals, DG

was confident that they were better suited to meet the customers’ needs.

II. DigitalGlobe Structure

As with most companies, there are 2 primary groups that establish the governance of

DigitalGlobe and these two groups are The Board of Directors and the Management Team. The board of

directors is responsible for establishing and maintaining an organizational environment that optimizes

performance for the entire staff. Out of the entire board of directors there is only one that is both a

board member and on the management team; Jeffery Tarr, President and Chief Executive Officer. The

management teams’ responsibilities oversee the entire operation of DigitalGlobe. They range from

development of software that needs to be produced so that customers have greater ease of use with

the data that they are receiving, to infrastructure providing a robust framework uniting the newest

technology within DG to provide this data at blazing speeds for the customers. The entire team of

people will be displayed later in the organizational chart displayed at the end of this paper. For the most 3


part the company is broken down into a functional departmentalization structure, addressing most

sections like HR, Infrastructure and Operations into their appropriate facets of the company. Inspecting

closer though, one can also detect elements of product/customer departmentalization by noting that

there are managers specifically for government contracts and defense/intelligence sales.

III. DigitalGlobe Culture

Due to the aggressive approach that DG took when it first started, they expanded vastly by

orbiting 3 different satellites to gather as much data as possible about the Earth. Because of this, there

were a multitude of name changes, mergers and contracts that absorbed various cultures from different

organizations. This was an era of great opportunity for this company as they partnered with Google,

Microsoft, Oracle and not to mention have numerous government contracts to fund this growth.

Expansion was great, but at a cost. During an interview with an engineer at DG they mentioned that,

“Senior Management does not rely on employee experience to accomplish tasks. Instead benchmarks

and deadlines are set with the aim of maximizing quarterly revenue. Employee ideas are often ignored

in favor of ideas from management or other departments without operational experience. Stop hiring

senior vice presidents and hire some engineers and support people to keep the factory running. Actually

focus on agile development and continuous deployment - quarterly monolithic software upgrades does

not make your factory agile.” (Anonymous DG, 2014) From this quote one would think that due to the

rapid growth and absorption that there may be some contention due to a lack of stability with the

culture but based off of what the vision and mission statements claim, one would think differently. Here

is the mission/vision statement of DG:

“Seeing a better world™

4


By giving our customers the power to see the Earth clearly and in new ways, we enable them to make

our world a better place. By 2020, become the indispensable source of information about our changing

planet. We are relentlessly committed to our customer and our purpose. Our values guide us as we help

our customer save lives, resource and time: We act with integrity, always. We treat people with respect

in all dealings. We put mission and team before self. We inspire curiosity and harness innovation. Our

results matter.” (http://www.digitalglobe.com/about-us/company#overview)

IV. DG Challenges

There are 2 primary difficulties that are going to be plaguing DigitalGlobe if they stay the path of

rapid growth in the next 6 years. These two areas are in infrastructure and employee satisfaction

regarding the culture of the company. Starting with infrastructure, the environment of DG is typically

that of massive growth especially in technology. In order to keep up with the advances in remote

sensing, an organization needs to be up to speed in the area of ‘big data’. This term refers to a

collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database

management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation,

storage, search, sharing, transfer, analysis and visualization. In another employee interview, they

mentioned this regarding the issues with technology, “It's the big-data problem. We process massive

amounts of imagery, and we need to meet very exact timelines. So the challenge is how to create a

flexible computing model that lets us create the right product for the customer. We created our own

high-performance compute cluster, and we are actively harnessing the power of graphics processing

units to do this. By moving processing from CPUs to GPUs, we have seen anywhere from a 10- to 20-

times improvement in speed. Today we have somewhere around 20 petabytes of data between

spinning disk and tape. In the future, customers will no longer be able to receive all of the data they

5


need to answer a problem. The data is becoming an immovable object. So we're going to create in our

cloud an opportunity for customers to bring us their computations, which we can then run on our high-

performance computing environment. It will be easier to bring the computations to the data than to

bring the data to the computations.”

The next area that is a challenge is the ever morphing culture that DG has due to the complexity and

nature of being such an aggressive company. To make matters worse is that they are building a new

headquarters further South of Longmont, CO. Employees are disappointed that their company is

focusing more on upper management and expansion instead of hiring more engineers. Here is a list of

complaints that an employee was able to provide:

“Senior Management does not rely on employee experience to accomplish tasks. Instead

benchmarks and deadlines are set with the aim of maximizing quarterly revenue.

Employee ideas are often ignored in favor of ideas from management or other departments

without operational experience.

A company value reads "Putting mission and team before self"; often results in denied vacation

or short notice weekend responsibilities.

Performance reviews effectively marginalize good performance; they also take 5 months

complete.

Re-titling during the merger was hurried; many people have been summarily demoted by threat

of layoffs.” (Anonymous DG, 2014)

The last quote was the biggest threat that could be seen to the company. When employee morale is

completely shot due to the fear of being laid off, productivity spirals out of control.

6


V. DigitalGlobe Critical Evaluation

The geospatial information services industry typically consists of private/public sector

companies, agencies and research institutions that produce products, services and information to

display, analyze and interpret geospatial information. The industry at the moment is experiencing

significant change and growth as this technology is integrated with internet, telecommunication and

other information technology systems. The demand for this information is being driven by the military,

government and private sector customers who have been using this imagery and analysis products

through:

• National defense needs resulting from geopolitical uncertainty

• Humanitarian and relief support in response to natural disasters

• Environmental observation and support for climate change monitoring

• Commercial demand for satellite mapping technologies as online mapping services and personal

navigation devices become more common both domestically and internationally

• Design and planning for infrastructure projects, such as surveying and charting.

There are significant opportunities for continued growth as customers across a wide range of industries

realize the benefits of timely, accurate imagery and analysis on a global scale. Certain sectors in the

industry may find that future growth could be limited by government funding reductions in the U.S. and

by foreign government budgets as many countries are developing and launching their own satellite

imagery programs. Yet another notable issue is that an increased use of aerial imagery aircraft

(Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) could reduce the demand for satellite imagery.

7


VI. Overcoming Obstacles

DigitalGlobe owns and operates a highly agile and sophisticated constellation of high resolution

commercial earth imaging satellites. Their satellite network features are believed to be the highest

collection capacity, outstanding geolocation accuracy, largest high-resolution swath, repeat targeting

and intraday revisit capabilities commercially available. Through established imagery processing and

production facilities, management expertise, collection sources and comprehensive image library, they

offer a range of online and offline products/ services designed to allow customers to access and

integrate the data into their business operations. The following key elements that will enable DG to

achieve a long-term business strategy both through organic growth and through acquisitions include:

Realizing the full potential of the EnhancedView contract. The EnhancedView contract with the

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), contains multiple deliverables, including a service level

agreement portion, infrastructure enhancements and other services. The EnhancedView contract has a

full potential value of $3.6 billion over the life of the contract. This contract represents the largest

contract in the Company’s history, providing 60.8% of our revenue in 2012.

(http://investor.digitalglobe.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=70788&p=irol-newsArticle&id=1789526) This

contract is a validation of the capabilities DigitalGlobe offer to the U.S. Government to serve intelligence

officers, first responders and other government users of the data. They have committed to add to their

capabilities to deeply embed themselves with the U.S. Government’s imagery related work flow. This

includes more web based, valued-added imagery services providing an integrated operational

connection with the U.S. Government to insure that the ever growing volumes of imagery are efficiently

and effectively delivered.

Diversification of customers beyond the U.S. Government. Digitalglobe expects to continue to build 8


existing and new relationships with customers’ and resellers outside of the U.S. Government.

Diversification of their revenue sources is a core imperative to realize the full potential of the

opportunity in the industry and reduce dependence on the U.S. Government. Today, DG serves

international government customers within their defense and intelligence along with civil agencies due

to their requirements for imagery and related services. These services consisted of 11.0% of DG’s total

2012 revenue. (http://investor.digitalglobe.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=70788&p=irol-

newsArticle&id=1789526) Additionally, DigitalGlobe serves customers who provide location based

services to people and businesses that connect to their imagery related mapping services through

desktop and mobile computing devices which comprised approximately 7.3% of our 2012 revenue.

(http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/secfilings.asp?ticker=DGI) Finally, they

serve an emerging group of customers, primarily through resellers and partners, in other industry

verticals such as financial services, oil and gas and telecommunications. This broad set of customers

represented approximately 5.5% of our total 2012 revenue.

(http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/secfilings.asp?ticker=DGI) By building a

more diversified customer and revenue base, DigitalGlobe will be less subject to volatility surrounding

potential future changes in U.S. government budgets and policies.

Optimize DG’s satellite constellation and ground processing capabilities to serve all customers. This

organization continues to optimize and develop their satellite constellation and ground terminal

network in order to increase the capacity of the network that is made available to the customers.

Construction on WorldView-3 began in September 2010 and is on track to be launched in the second

half of 2014. (https://www.digitalglobe.com/resources/satellite-information) At the end of July 2012,

DG commissioned the remaining three of an incremental seven remote ground terminals that were put

into service to satisfy certain obligations, which has increased their capacity to collect and transmit

satellite imagery by approximately 15%, or 400,000 square kilometers per day compared to 2011, 9


subject to the type of imagery being targeted, and reduced the median time to get the imagery to the

ground by approximately 12%. (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/12/business/company-news-a-plan-

for-close-up-images-of-earth-from-space.html)

Expand our value-added products and services. DigitalGlobe’s earth imagery, resolution, accuracy, high-

scale image production capabilities and expert personnel have proven them as the leader in imagery

production and enhancement. The classified facilities and staff certified to process imagery from

multiple earth imagery providers has more than met the needs of their customers. DG has made

investments in their imagery production capabilities that have enabled them to serve higher quality and

quantities of processed imagery via the web services infrastructure. By increasing their capability to

provide analysis and insight derived from imagery, they can enhance their offerings and the value that

they provide to the customers. (http://www.foxbusiness.com/investing/2014/03/07/digitalglobes-slide-

offers-up-investing-lesson/)

VII. Conclusion

Since the conception of this company back in the early 1990’s, DigitalGlobe has held on to an

otherwise important source of power when it comes to government support. Noticing that this is not

the best practice since there have been several hiccups in the late 2000’s economy, DigitalGlobe has

started investing in other realms that have proven to be more stable. They are doing this by:

1. Realizing the full potential of the EnhancedView contract.

2. Diversification of customers beyond the U.S. Government.

3. Optimize DG’s satellite constellation and ground processing capabilities to serve all customers.

4. Expand our value-added products and services.

By focusing on bullet point #2, DigitalGlobe can then establish a foothold in target markets that can

sustain them during times of economic turmoil. Once these other customers have been ingrained into 10


the system, the next steps would be bullets 3 & 4 focusing on the customer because, in the end, if they

don’t buy the product then there is no reason for the organization to exist. Repeat use from the

customer is the primary goal once they have been found.

Overall, with the release of a new satellite, the merging of GeoEye and providing a robust infrastructure

that is full of the latest technology, DigitalGlobe will be more than capable of providing greater value to

customers through an integrated satellite network along with a broader set of products and services.

11


Works Cited

"2014 SEC Filings - digitalglobe inc (DGI)." Businessweek.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.

<http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/secfilings.asp?ticker=DGI>.

"Company Overview." DigitalGlobe company overview. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2014.

<https://www.digitalglobe.com/about-us/company#overview>.

"Investors Page." Investors page for DigitalGlobe. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2014.

<http://investor.digitalglobe.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=70788&p=irol-newsArticle&id=1789526>.

Markoff, John. "A Plan for Close-Up Images of Earth From Space." The New York Times. The

New York Times, 11 Feb. 1993. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.

<http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/12/business/company-news-a-plan-for-close-up-images-of-

earth-from-space.html>.

"Satellite information." DigitalGlobe Satellite Information . N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2014.

<https://www.digitalglobe.com/resources/satellite-information>.

"The Grill: DigitalGlobe CIO Scott Hicar on the challenges and opportunities of Earth imagery."

Computerworld. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2014.

<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228124/The_Grill_DigitalGlobe_CIO_Scott_Hicar_

on_the_challenges_and_opportunities_of_Earth_imagery>.

12


Appendix A.

13


Appendix B.

14

Documents

The Struggle of Time and Technology.docx · Web viewIn 1992, a young fledgling company emerged into the market of remote sensing and Earth observation under the name WorldView Imaging