Orange Business Services, as part of the Airbus Consortium, has been selected for the Copernicus data and information access service (DIAS) project by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Orange Business Services, through its entity Orange Cloud for Business, is providing expertise in cloud-based ICT services together with its globally operated public cloud solution, Flexible Engine, to complement Airbus’ aerospace knowledge.
Copernicus is a European Union initiative to provide free and open access to near-real-time data, models and forecasts about our planet, harvested by a family of dedicated satellites and in-situ observations. This Earth Observation Data is key to help manage global security and the environment. DIAS was established to support the Copernicus program, making this data freely available to EU citizens through a cloud-computing architecture.
The Airbus and Orange Business Services consortium aims to develop and offer within six months a single one-stop-shop of all the data and value-added services. This will allow scientists, businesses and entrepreneurs to create business models and develop software and applications based on Earth Observation Data.
Flexible Engine is a public cloud offering built on OpenStack technology. It will provide the massive scalability and big data environment required to store, structure and access Copernicus data. Orange Business Services will assist Airbus to assess, define and update the cloud roadmap in line with this strategy.
“Big data analytics supported by the right cloud capabilities can help unlock the value of this data to innovate and create new business models to provide economic growth for Europe,” said Philippe Laplane, CEO of Orange Cloud for Business. “The entire Orange team is proud to participate in a project as ambitious as Copernicus DIAS. By utilizing our know-how and public cloud solution Flexible Engine, we will offer users innovative solutions to take advantage of the big data collected by ESA.”
