IceWeb, Spot Image Partner on Imagery Appliance

Cloud-based storage network company IceWeb announced a partnership with Spot Image, the U.S. subsidiary of a French satellite imagery provider, to build and market a turnkey appliance pre-bundled with Spot Image's imagery served by Google Earth Enterprise. The appliance will be designed to offer a deployable service that delivers Spot Image's imagery to customers as pre-built globes served by Google Earth Enterprise.

IceWeb said the availability of the appliance would help broaden Spot Image's reach into existing customers and will enable organizations to deliver Spot Image imagery to their users through Google Earth and the Google Earth and Google Maps APIs. The first units are expected to ship in January 2010. "We are excited to work with Spot Image Corporation to use the Google Earth Enterprise platform to deliver innovative imagery solutions that meet critical business needs," said IceWeb CEO John Signorello. "IceWeb is very pleased to be the integration partner and hardware supplier on which to deliver these solutions."

Dylan Lorimer, Google Earth Enterprise product manager, said Google Earth Enterprise brings the power of Google Earth and Google Maps to organizations that want to securely and rapidly deliver geospatial data to their users. "Spot Image Corporation and IceWEB collaborating to offer a pre-built, turn-key system is an exciting step toward making it even easier for organizations to offer high quality, broad coverage Spot Image imagery to their users through the Google Earth and Maps experience," Lorimer said.

IceWeb also announced a rugged notebook computer to allow the Department of Defence (DOD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Intelligence Community to allow forward deployment Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data into virtually any environment. The notebook, called "WorldBook," has what IceWeb claims is the industry's largest disk capacity, capable of storing more than 1.28TB of data. Additional features include optional GPS, 3G Wireless, smart card reader and sunlight readable display. Updates to the imagery can be deployed to the field on IceWeb disk-packs and uploaded with available fire-wire interface.

"The global environment today requires tool sets which allow data assets be available wherever they are needed. The WorldBook builds on IceWeb's strategy of providing solutions to make GIS data available wherever and whenever it is needed. Our appliances meet the needs of desk-based users, our MLP III product meets the needs of field deployable high performance servers, and now, WorldBook puts this data in your lap, backpack or briefcase," said Signorello. "WorldBook for the first time makes critical GIS imagery available on an airplane, train, in a hotel room, tent, or yurt. We're confident that this solution will be well received throughout the GIS community. The ability to forward-deploy complex data sets on the highly portable WorldBook will greatly benefit all of our GIS partners and their clients as well as open up potential new revenue streams for the company."