The service uses the SAP HANA platform to make Earth observation data consumable both through the newly available Earth Observation Analysis service, as well as in urban and environmental use cases.

“The European Sentinel satellites are the largest providers of Earth observation data worldwide. A major challenge is to convert this fantastic data into customer-specific information. Large-scale hosted processing is the next step in order to meet their challenge, thereby bringing users to the data rather than data to the users,” said Josef Aschbacher, director, Earth observation, ESA.

The service provides a standardised interface and an application programming interface (API) that provides continuous access to historical and real-time satellite data. It is expected to be used by government agencies and companies in a range of industries – from insurance to mining, utilities and retail, to gain insight into questions such as where to place new power lines, where to build a new store or when to harvest copes.

“Our partnership with ESA paves the way to a new field of geospatial business applications, making it possible to close the gap between traditional Earth observation and a digitalized business world,” said Dr Carsten Linz, business development officer and global head, Center for Digital Leadership, SAP. “That opens a bright future for space-related applications, such as digital farming, gas pipeline management, and the improved planning of smart cities – bringing businesses to a competitive edge, creating new high-tech jobs and improving peoples’ lives.”

The Earth Observation Analysis service can initially be tested at no cost in a non-productive environment until 31 December this year, with the service to be generally available in the first quarter of 2017 with a consumption-based pricing model based on the number of API calls made.

SAP also plans to release a set of related micro services based on HANA to help parties build flexible solutions using the ESA Earth observation data in the future.

At SAP’s TechEd event in Barcelona, reinsurance company Munich Re showcased its use of the Earth Observation Analysis service to gain insight and predict potential future impact from historic and current data.

“Every year, wildfires affect nature, people, their homes and business,” said Andreas Siebert, head of geospatial solutions, Munich Re. “While the progress of a fire itself is hard to predict, this new service from SAP, leveraging satellite data from ESA, allows us to accurately calculate costs and risks related to wildfires and even gain insights into the future probability of wildfires. This will help us to keep costs down for our clients.”

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The move is part of a recently announced global technology partnership between SAP and Esri.

Planned for 2016, the next release of Esri’s ArcGIS mapping and geospatial intelligence technology will expand the existing native integration with SAP HANA to allow organisations to run all their SAP Business Suite and ArcGIS applications within a SAP HANA architecture.

The collaboration between SAP and Esri is expected to enable organisations to run both GIS workloads and advanced spatial analytics on the single SAP HANA geodatabase.

“We’re very excited about the enterprise geodatabase support for SAP HANA,” said Jack Dangermond, president, Esri. “It will bring our customers speed, simplicity and better integration with their enterprise information. For SAP customers, it delivers a complete platform for mapping and geospatial intelligence. By synchronising our platforms, our respective customers will benefit across the enterprise. We’re doing the work to make sure that GIS and mapping is available to all — not just traditional mapping experts.”

“Our customers represent a new generation of data stewards requiring an in-memory computing platform that performs at scales unseen before — including large-scale geography,” said Daniel Schneiss, senior vice president and global head, SAP HANA platform and databases, SAP. “As we enter a world of exponential data growth and the Internet of Things, the need to geospatially analyse big data will only increase from this point forward.”

According to SAP, organisations will be able to perform a range of functions with increased speed and ease, including:

• Applying sophisticated business rules and relationships to spatial data directly in SAP HANA
• Defining advanced georelational models such as topologies and networks
• Permitting GIS and enterprise business users to work within the same multiuser access and editing environment.

In addition, SAP and Esri have agreed to work together to further integrate advanced ArcGIS geospatial capabilities and content across SAP’s broader application portfolio enabling new solutions that could not previously be delivered.

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