With five satellites streaming 100 terabytes of satellite-captured global images every day, DigitalGlobe Inc. had reached a point this year where it had to do something with its massive tape storage archive. The solution started with small, shippable storage devices and ended with a massive semi-truck driving a secret route to safely deposit the company’s enormous visual collection. But for this satellite network company, the journey had just begun.

“That [truck] represented every image ever taken by DigitalGlobe in the history of our company,” said Jay Littlepage (pictured), vice president of infrastructure and operations at DigitalGlobe. “It’s now in AWS, so we’re pretty committed now.”

Littlepage told his story during an appearance on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile live-streaming studio, during the AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. He spoke with hosts John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and John Furrier (@furrier) about the storage solution for DigitalGlobe’s commercial imaging business and how customers have come to rely on its satellite images. (*Disclosure below.)

Company used AWS transport service

Founded 25 years ago, DigitalGlobe takes images from 700 miles up in space and can resolve them to a pixel the size of a laptop. “We’re basically flying a giant camera that we can fly like a drone,” Littlepage said.

All of that imagery had begun to add up, so DigitalGlobe turned to AWS for storage solutions in the cloud. It initially transferred portions of its tape library using Snowball, a storage device provided by AWS.

But with 100 petabytes of images, the process threatened to take too long. So the company instead signed up for Snowmobile, an actual semi-truck service AWS used for transport DigitalGlobe’s imagery to a cloud storage service facility. “We were the first customer ever to use Snowmobile,” Littlepage said.

Demand for the company’s satellite image technology is growing. Uber Technologies Inc. uses its service to generate algorithms that can provide the best locations for ride-share pick-up or drop-off in cities around the world. And Facebook has been analyzing the visual data to determine population densities in areas where connectivity does not yet exist.

“Facebook is using the imagery to help build out the Internet,” Littlepage said.

Although DigitalGlobe has some government business, 99 percent of its imagery is commercial and unclassified. “We’re a commercial company that does public sector work,” Littlefield stated. “We have to make a profit.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit. (* Disclosure: AWS sponsored this AWS Public Sector Summit segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE