EODI Blog

Everyone in Earth Observation knows them. Global footprint. Long heritage. Impressive satellites. Massive demand. On paper, they should be a benchmark for a modern imagery program. The reality is different.

Despite the scale of their space assets, the customer experience is still running on manual processes. Orders move through inboxes. Delivery timing depends on human availability. Workflows that should be triggered by APIs are instead handled through coordination emails. The friction is unnecessary and every downstream organisation ends up paying for it in time, money, and operational risk.

The problem isn’t the satellites. It’s the absence of infrastructure.

The supplier becomes the bottleneck

A request can be captured in orbit within minutes, yet analysts and field teams may wait days or weeks for usable data. The blocker isn’t physics. It’s the delivery model. This slowdown doesn’t just delay insights. It undermines operational trust.

• Analysts idle while data is “on the way”
• Field operations halt or reroute
• Decision-makers lose confidence
• Program budgets get redirected to manual workarounds

It’s not satellite tasking complexity. It’s infrastructure debt.

Other industries solved this a long time ago

Banking wouldn’t tolerate manual data exchanges. Aviation wouldn’t accept PDF-based telemetry. Healthcare wouldn’t run hospitals through spreadsheet attachments. Yet the EO sector excuses outdated delivery models simply because legacy suppliers have normalised them.

Enterprises and defence now need to own their EODI strategy

Relying on imagery suppliers to drive the data infrastructure agenda has proven ineffective. Their business incentives optimise for licensing scenes, not for improving customer workflows.

If a defence program, mining operator, or government agency needs operational reliability, they cannot allow an imagery provider to dictate the speed, accessibility, or usability of the data that drives mission outcomes.

A true Earth Observation Data Infrastructure strategy must be owned by the customer, not outsourced to a supplier whose incentives are misaligned.

The market is shifting

The winners in EO will not be the companies with the most satellites. They will be the ones who deliver usable data directly into operational systems: fast, consistently, and securely.

Organisations that take ownership of their EODI strategy will move faster, integrate more sources, and avoid being slowed down by legacy supplier workflows.

The satellites are not the problem. The lack of infrastructure is.

The organisations that take control of their infrastructure are the ones who will unlock the real value of EO.

Every modern data system assumes one thing: infrastructure. Whether it’s aviation safety, border security, wildfire response, or commodity logistics, the data flows through structured systems with built-in automation, access control, and observability. Earth Observation is the outlier.

Even with more satellites in orbit than ever before, EO programs still rely on PDFs, ad-hoc portals, and email chains to move data. Delays appear at every stage, not because of satellites, but because there is no infrastructure layer connecting upstream sources to downstream decisions.

Without that layer, EO programs stall. Imagery sits idle. Operators burn hours scheduling. Analysts spend time converting formats instead of interpreting events. Sensors in orbit don’t translate into visibility on the ground.

Infrastructure is the fix

An EO program that runs on infrastructure doesn’t treat imagery as a “file to deliver.” It treats it as data: ordered, standardised, governed, routed, and delivered the same way every other mission-critical dataset already is.

This shift is now unavoidable. The pressure is appearing first in the sectors where reliability matters most.

Operational risk: National security, maritime domain awareness

These organisations are not short on imagery. They are short on control. Tasking is still routed manually. Scheduling decisions are decoupled from field requirements. Fulfilment lives in disconnected systems with no audit trail and no time guarantees.

Under EODI:

• Tasking requests are API-triggered, not emailed
• Constellations (sovereign, allied, commercial) are coordinated in one system
• Capture conditions are modelled automatically
• Deliveries are traceable, format-aligned, and ISR-ready

The result is not just faster imagery. It’s predictable latency and reduced uncertainty in time-critical operations.

Environmental monitoring: Tailings, methane, wildfire, weed detection

Monitoring programs often have sensors, schedules, and compliance requirements, but no reactive loop. A dam sensor triggers an alert, emails go out, and then someone manually checks satellite availability. Imagery might arrive long after the event.

Under EODI:

• Threshold breaches trigger satellite and drone tasking automatically
• Multi-sensor assets are scheduled together (optical, SAR, thermal)
• Raw imagery is normalised and converted on ingest
• Results route into dashboards, SCADA overlays, and audit systems

This structure reduces blind spots and ensures every incident is tied to clear visual evidence.

EO & space data: Satellite operators, imagery aggregators, space agencies

For most satellite operators, fulfilment still scales by headcount. Orders come in via forms or emails. Tasking is managed in spreadsheets. Archive access requires manual approval. It’s effective for small volumes, but not for growth.

With EODI:

• Customers self-serve tasking and archive access
• Feasibility logic runs automatically via digital twin simulation
• Fulfilment is routed and tracked end-to-end
• Delivery is searchable, standardised, and usage-governed

A manual order desk becomes a scalable data platform.

EODI adoption: The first 180 days

After six months, EO data moves the way it should: securely, automatically, and predictably, through infrastructure, not inboxes and/or phones.