MakaLani LLC Announces 21CSI Added to its Team to Market Geospatial Products and Services to the US-Government
MakaLani LLC today announced its new partnership with 21st Century Systems, Inc., Omaha, Nebraska (21CSI). Through this agreement 21CSI adds RapidEye’s high-resolution geospatial electro-optical data to its growing suite of geospatial product offerings designed to meet growing U.S. demand for geospatial collection and analysis.
Under the agreement, 21CSI will act as MakaLani's exclusive distributor and manage the dissemination, marketing and sales of RapidEye satellite data to a broad United States government market.
“As a trusted partner with the US government, 21CSI is strategically positioned to provide an array of innovative commercial products by offering RapidEye data and services, as well as other complementary satellite services,” said Charlie Pires, President, MakaLani, LLC.
Earlier this year, 21CSI established partnerships with Germany’s InfoTerra to distribute synthetic aperture radar (SAR) products from the TerraSAR-X satellite. In addition, 21CSI has joined with Earth Perspectives, LLC for automated image search and change detection capabilities.
“We are very excited to add RapidEye products to our growing range of offerings,” commented 21CSI’s CEO Jeffrey D. Hicks. “RapidEye data, combined with Earth Perspectives’ capabilities, provides a unique and cost-effective set of products to many customers in the US. And when it comes to operational security (OPSEC), 21CSI’s unique U.S.-based Tasking-Processing-Exploitation-Dissemination (TPED) architecture allows customers to have confidence in using non U.S.-based geospatial sources.”
Dr. Curt Davis, president of Earth Perspectives, LLC, responded to the new partnership by saying, "We are pleased to work with 21CSI to offer our web-based products and services to U.S. government and commercial customers. We believe RapidEye data are particularly well-suited for many applications and our web-based solutions offer easy access to meet a wide variety of end user needs." Since its entry into the geospatial market, 21CSI has moved aggressively to establish U.S.-based TPED architecture for non U.S.-based geospatial providers, such as InfoTerra and RapidEye.
21CSI has established a secure data storage and processing facility in Nebraska, as well as a secure facility for data analysis. The company is bringing online a backup data storage facility to ensure continuous data availability and reliability. The facilities will be connected via redundant, secure, high-speed connections to the internet backbone.
Wolfgang Biedermann, CEO of RapidEye, commented, “The addition of 21CSI rounds out the MakaLani team, so that, together, they are well positioned to provide many agencies of the U.S. government with a unique and unprecedented product offering. We are excited about the capabilities that 21CSI adds as RapidEye expands to better serve both the U.S. government and the U.S. market as a whole.”
MakaLani and RapidEye announced a partnership on April 10, 2009 that made MakaLani one of RapidEye’s principal distributors in the U.S. The RapidEye satellite system – a constellation of five satellites capable of downloading over 4 million km² of 5-meter resolution, multi-spectral imagery per day, and a ground segment for processing and archiving data – allows for cost-effective and comprehensive satellite based optical data service.
