On Wednesday, September 8, SATELLITE held the “Reducing Ground Infrastructure Costs in the New Space Supply-Chain” session, where Leaf Space, IT’s U.S. Managing Director, Jai Dialani, moderated a panel discussion that included:

• Assaf Cohen, Global Vice President Sales and Marketing, SpaceBridge Inc.
• Stuart Daughtridge, Vice President, Kratos
• Paul Mattear, Principal Business Development Manager, Amazon Web Services
• Sergy A. Mummert, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Americas, SES
• Richard Schgallis, Executive Vice President, Space and Communications USA, Safran Data Systems

There is always constant speculation about the “future” of the space economy, and how it will include increased demands for satellite services and capabilities, higher speeds, and ubiquitous access. But the experts on this panel explained that these high demands already exist and will only be growing larger in the coming years. But, there is one huge roadblock standing in the way to satisfying these needs.

Over the past decade, the technological improvements that have taken place in the space layer have been monumental. According to Daughtridge, these technological advancements have equipped software defined satellites with “unbelievable capabilities.” And the wide array of missions that the space layer can support are vast. Today’s satellites have the ability to enable orbital transport, Earth observation, IoT, broadband communications, and cislunar missions.

According to Schgallis, “We are rapidly approaching this point where systems will become multi-mission capable, with higher and higher data rates, and multi-band terminals…There’s this goal to make things as widely compatible for economies of scale as possible.”

“The ground segment needs to catch up to basically enable those capabilities that have been put in the spacecraft.” – Stuart Daughtridge

The issue that is preventing the deployment of these services is that the ground segment systems meant to direct and control these satellite missions are years behind in their own development, rendering a satellite’s potential capabilities untapped and unused.

And this untapped space layer potential can translate into major losses for satellite providers. “The ground segment’s behind,” said Daughtridge. “The ground segment needs to catch up to basically enable those capabilities that have been put in the spacecraft. Because right now, it’s really hard to monetize the capabilities that those satellites have.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter how great a satellite is if the ground segment can’t support it. So what can be done to catch these ground segments up?

According to Mattear, “One of the issues that we have with ground infrastructure is a lack of standards across the board.” As the satellite industry continues to move towards utilizing more partner-developed software defined systems, there must be a standard that they can develop towards. “Otherwise, you end up with a single stovepipe system,” said Mattear. “And that stovepipe system doesn’t let you monetize.”

The consequences from the lack of interoperability spread far beyond satellite providers. The U.S. military is working to embrace a combined MILSATCOM and COMSATCOM architecture that will deliver the increased satellite bandwidth they need for today’s network-enabled operations, and give them access to the innovation of the commercial satellite industry. However, the lack of interoperability in ground networks and hardware is making this combined architecture difficult to achieve.

“One of the issues that we have with ground infrastructure is a lack of standards across the board.” – Paul Mattear

According to Frank Backes, senior vice president for Federal Space at Kratos, “Unfortunately, multiple organizations independently pursuing their own mission needs have produced a number of ground-based proprietary satellite communication solutions, which have created a lack of interoperability between different commercial services and the armed forces. Those same proprietary solutions remain roadblocks to a dynamic SATCOM infrastructure supporting communication for an evolving military theater.”

Through standardization, satellite and ground system providers would be able to implement solutions and services that would reduce ground infrastructure costs, and, according to Mattear, “allow that to be monetized by other customers, help that symbiotic chain generate revenue across the board, and more importantly, support the end customer.”

But how does that standardization happen? All the panelists agreed that virtualization and digitization, like moving towards cloud technologies, are key.

According to Mummert digitization and virtualization are not only game changers in reducing ground infrastructure costs, but they also provide opportunities for new service models. “Having more infrastructure distributed across a global network, like AWS…is really a game changer for the satellite operators.”

With the promises of being able to move a lot of the work into cloud environments, and making the access compatible, no matter where the customer is, is “opening up a lot of doors” according to Schgallis. “I’m very excited about these opportunities, and our organization is actively working in this vein with as much virtualization and cloud processing as possible.”

Virtualization also accelerates the move from purpose-built hardware to mission unique software. “In software applications, especially in a cloud environment where you can spin up service chains and things like that, you can get the resiliency and the scalability that a cloud offers,” explained Daughtridge. “It allows you to have flexibilities for multiple different missions, with the same basic generic hardware, because you can change the personality of the infrastructure.”

Implementing these service models, through virtualization, means that satellite provider customers who are used to consuming cloud resources in the terrestrial world, can now have access to them via satellite. “The model makes sense to them,” said Mummert. “The interoperability is very important to them. It just enables a whole new ecosystem and economy.”

“We want standards. We want to drive scale for the industry. I think this is the right direction, but it needs more work. But we’ll get there.” – Sergy Mummert

But this does pose a challenge for ground segment developers, such as panelist Assaf Cohen. According to Cohen, “From the ground segment perspective…we have a lot of complexities. We have to deal with many new technologies with many orbits.” He explained that the challenges lie within developing the software to cope with all of the hardware challenges.

“We have to be interoperable,” explained Cohen. “To connect all these dots and implement the standards, we are an integral part and not just the one supporting the network.” He went on to say that the challenges get even more complicated because everything must become interoperable in real time.

To remedy these challenges, several groups have popped up within the industry to support a standardization dialogue. And Mummert happens to be on one of them. “We want standards,” said Mummert. “We want to drive scale for the industry. I think this is the right direction, but it needs more work. But we’ll get there.”

In the end, all of the issues of standardization and virtualization comes down to the partner ecosystem coming together to solve these immense challenges. According to Mummert, when industry partners cross-collaborate, “You open up these doors and create interoperability and opportunities for things to be created on your platform.”

The post How ground segment systems are rendering innovative satellite capabilities useless appeared first on SES Space and Defense.

But the cloud means a lot more to the military today than just access to files and data from anywhere. That’s because the role of the cloud is evolving as the government and military are increasingly focused on modernization and digital transformation.

Today, the bare metal that once housed all government and military applications and systems – whether they were mainframes or servers in dedicated data centers – is being replaced by modern infrastructures that connect physical resources with on-premise, off-premise, or hybrid cloud architectures. And there’s a good reason for that.

Applications and software are starting to take an oversized role in how today’s government agencies and military organizations operate. Applications help them automate mundane, repetitive jobs. They analyze data to find relationships and actionable insights. They increase operational efficiency by giving civilian and uniformed personnel new capabilities and tools to use in their tasks and as they work towards accomplishing their mission. And those applications are being developed and deployed in new ways.

The cloud-native applications that are coming out of today’s modern application development teams are built in pieces as microservices. And they’re built in containers that live on cloud resources that are provisioned and defined by Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions. They’re then deployed to modern infrastructure that incorporates cloud resources that can be provisioned quickly, scaled to meet requirements, and enable increased and remote access.

With the cloud becoming so essential to the applications that are transforming how our government agencies and military organizations operate, it makes sense that access to the cloud is an important consideration for the government.

But what does that have to do with satellites?

Cloud connectivity from virtually anywhere
Many of the places today’s military and government agencies operate are places that they would consider Disconnected, Intermittent, Limited bandwidth (DIL) environments. These are locations where terrestrial networks don’t exist – such as geographically remote and isolated locations. Or they’re places where terrestrial networks have been denied or are untrusted – like the locations where our military is often deployed.

When users have to operate in DiIL environments, it significantly hampers access to the cloud. And that means there’s no access to the next-generation applications and software solutions that are becoming essential for military and government operations.

Satellites can enable that connectivity.

“…today’s commercial satellite providers are partnering with the largest providers of public and private cloud resources to ensure direct connectivity to their clouds. That means dedicated cross-connects and cloud infrastructure are being integrated within the teleports of commercial satellite providers to ensure…unfettered, direct connectivity into cloud infrastructure and resources.”

In fact, with the evolution of high-throughput satellites operating at Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), commercial satellite services can deliver fiber-like connectivity. This means that today’s satellite providers can not only ensure that cloud resources are accessible, but that they’re accessible with a user experience on-par with today’s high-bandwidth terrestrial networks.

But it’s not enough to just connect military users to the Internet and have them access their cloud-native applications and cloud resources through there. That arrangement denies the military the security and control that it demands in its IT infrastructure and networks. It also makes it nearly impossible for satellite providers to guarantee a specific SLA since there are simply too many external factors at play.

To get around this problem, today’s commercial satellite providers are partnering with the largest providers of public and private cloud resources to ensure direct connectivity to their clouds. That means dedicated cross-connects and cloud infrastructure are being integrated within the teleports of commercial satellite providers to ensure that military users have unfettered, direct connectivity into their cloud infrastructure and resources.

And – in the very near future – the same satellite equipment leveraged today by tactical users to connect in the field will be deployed to CSPs and government facilities to ensure that satellite connectivity reaches directly into their data centers. This gives military users the flexibility of either having cloud infrastructure in the teleport, or satellite hardware in their data centers.

As cloud-native applications, cloud storage for important mission data, and digital transformation initiatives gain importance across the military, it becomes essential that access to clouds is enabled from anywhere.

Commercial satellite providers are working hard to ensure military users have that access wherever they are in the world – and that their user experience is on-par or better than what they have at home. And they’re accomplishing that by working hand-in-hand with the cloud providers that the military increasingly depends on.

The post Getting to the cloud through space – how satellites are powering a digital revolution appeared first on SES Space and Defense.