SkyWatch, who develop Earth Observation (EO) software that connects satellite data operators and application developers, is always looking for ways to fulfill its mission of making EO data more accessible and cheaper. Today they announced a new partnership with Picterra who offer a machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) software-as-a-service geospatial platform. In an interview with SpaceQ, SkyWatch CEO James Slifierz discusses the new partnership.
Data providers and actionable data
For Slifierz and SkyWatch, the way forward to bigger growth is by building the relationships between themselves and EO data providers and then partnering with companies like Picterra.
SkyWatch recognizes that they can’t build all the tools for all the potential EO markets. “We’ve always fundamentally believed we didn’t want to do a lot of this ourselves. The reason being is because everyone’s out there doing it, and there’s people in the world that can probably do it better than we can.” Driving home that point is the fact that earlier this year they began a collaboration with AgIntegrated for the agricultural sector.
In the press release announcing the new partnership the companies see the benefit of their combined offering to customers this way. “With this partnership, Picterra’s customers can now automatically monitor their areas of interest for change, thanks to a combination of (SkyWatch) EarthCache’s automated tasking request feature and Picterra’s automated detection algorithms. Previously unseen monitoring capabilities are now made available to anyone.”
I asked Slifierz to elaborate on the partnership and benefits to customers. Slifierz says Picterra customers have been uploading their own data and then using their ML/AI tools to analyze that data. SkyWatch asked Picterra, what if Picterra customers didn’t have to upload their own data?
Slifierz says there are “two components you want to solve. One is, how do you make it easier for anyone to develop their own algorithm that can derive insights from this data? And then how can you feed them data to which they eventually continue to apply that algorithm to because they’re obviously building the algorithm for some purpose, not just for the sake of building the algorithm. And so with integration, any company in the world that’s using Picterra to develop their algorithms will be able to use the archive data on SkyWatch to develop their their algorithms, and then can use all of our automated tasking functionality once they have an algorithm that works too then start monitoring areas of interest.”
Picterra believes that the integration of SkyWatch data means they become “the leading solution on the market for extracting insights with self-serve ML/AI tools and EO imagery, enabling any company to cost-effectively access unprecedented geospatial intelligence & analytics capabilities.”
It’s easy to see how the two companies working together could provide a platform that would be useful to those looking to derive ongoing actionable intel from EO data. The questions customers will consider when deciding whether to use the platform include pricing, available data and ease of use of the Picterra Ml/AI tools.
The pandemic hasn’t slowed SkyWatch
I also took the opportunity to ask Slifierz a few questions about SkyWatch and how the company has been fairing this year,
Slifierz begins by saying how “2020 has been a tremendous year for scaling our business.” The ability to scale is in part a result of the US$7.5 million in Series A funding they announced in early January. That funding has allowed the company to go from 20 employees to 30 so far this year. They’re also in the process of trying to fill an additional five positions.
Because of the pandemic, everyone at SkyWatch works from home with the occasional employee visiting their office in Waterloo. Interestingly, Slifierz says 8 of the 10 new hires this year have never set foot in the office, or met with other employees, including himself, in person. And several of the hires are from other parts of Canada, and there’s even been one from the US. And while SkyWatch has the office, going forward, and in part as a result of the pandemic, they don’t have a problem with employees working from home if the productivity is there.
I also asked what the near future holds for SkyWatch. Slifierz said in the coming months and into the new year, they anticipate announcing several more partnerships for various EO market segments along with adding new data providers.