PCI Geomatics has successfully deployed a high speed image production system to the Amazon Cloud in support of Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform, to process and make available high resolution Imagery content. 

PCI’s GeoImaging Accelerator (GXL) technology was designed for automation and speed, leveraging off the shelf CPU/GPU hardware through highly parallelized processing capability, thereby accelerating production throughput over traditional desktop systems by orders of magnitude. Cloud based services offer the advantage of low cost computing resources across multiple instances that can be switched on and off as required, providing on demand scalability. PCI has deployed its GXL technology to the Amazon Cloud, where multiple instances can be tasked to process large volumes of imagery – on demand. 

The GXL Cloud System implementation is tailored to processing high resolution optical imagery, and can generate pan-sharpened, orthorectified, color balanced tiled mosaic products at high speed using multi CPU/GPU and multi-instance enabled technology. The complete system can transform uncorrected Level 1 frame based data from multiple satellite sensors into thousands of orthorectified and mosaicked products - on demand. 

“PCI understands that the market is increasingly accepting and demanding Cloud based solutions, given the many advantages offered. Through diligent work and a great amount of innovation, we are overcoming significant hurdles which have limited the availability of cloud computing for the customers’ Earth Observation and Imagery needs”, said David Stanley, CTO at PCI Geomatics. “…by staging the data directly within Amazon’s facility and coupling it with our Cloud optimized GXL system, we can leverage the true power of Cloud Based processing for our customers, that is - on-demand scalability for high speed production”. 

“Through the use of the GXL Cloud system that PCI has deployed to our Amazon Cloud instances, we are working diligently to provide high resolution and high quality content as quickly as possible for the ArcGIS Online platform”, said Steven Lambert, Senior Program Manager at Esri. 

PCI Geomatics will continue to support Esri by providing leading edge, cloud based processing power that can be scaled up/down based on Esri’s required throughput and data processing requirements.