NOTE: As a leading artificial intelligence and software development consultancy, Wovenware works closely with Maxar teams and its own customers to make it easier and faster to generate actionable insights from vast datasets. We invited Carlos to share his perspectives on “Insights as a Service,” an emerging AI and data analytics service that is helping drive value in the geospatial sector and beyond.
Carlos Melendez, VP of Operations at Wovenware, a Maxar company.
Data in all its forms—from images to text or video—drives business and governments alike today. It has become the lifeblood to smart decision making and problem solving, and end users have been working hard to harvest and cultivate data to generate actionable insights. Yet, accomplishing this task is easier said than done. End users often struggle with a plethora of data without a strategic plan of what to do with it, and even when they have a plan, they sometimes find that key types of data are missing.
To that end, “Insights as a Service” has emerged as a strategic business enabler. It’s an emerging model whereby service providers take on the task of maintaining, organizing, supplementing and interpreting an organization’s data to deliver insights that address specific business problems. To unpack the rising need for Insights as a Service, I wanted to share answers to some of the most common questions we’re hearing and underscore how we’re applying this approach to drive value for our customers.
Why is “Insights as a Service” becoming more attractive to end users?
Today, no business decision can be made without data. “Insights as a Service” enables organizations to source the insights without having to figure out how to manage and accumulate troves of data they may never need to use again. In a typical “as-a-service” model, companies only pay for the insights they need, without having to gather, prepare and analyze data, procure data analytics tools or develop predictive AI algorithms.
How does “Insights as a Service” work?
It starts with understanding the business problem, which sounds so basic, but isn’t as easy as it sounds. We work with the various stakeholders within an organization through a design experience session to understand what the organization hopes to achieve and determine the best strategy to move forward. We create and test a prototype solution to remove any project risk and instill confidence that the data-driven insights can help solve the problem.
Once the goal of the project is clearly articulated, datasets are gathered in the form of text, images or video, and that data—structured or unstructured—is cleansed and labeled so that we can train an appropriate machine learning algorithm, or predictive model. Once the solution has reached a high level of accuracy and supported by the trends and decisions created by the solution, we provide a comprehensive analysis and outline critical steps that can be taken to reach the stated goals. Organizations come to us for support of the full lifecycle or just parts of it. For example, we can simply provide the needed data or the predictive model, instead of the full data analysis.
What are some of the greatest benefits of this approach?
One of the biggest benefits is that it reduces costs associated with AI infrastructure, data storage and software licenses. End users are never stuck with expensive resources and data that could be used only once, and they only pay when insights are needed.
Can you share some examples of “Insights as a Service” in action?
One project we’re quite proud of is our development of a machine learning model and creation of datasets built on Maxar’s satellite imagery. Maxar’s customers leverage these datasets to address a wide range of national security, commercial and other priorities—from detecting changes in land use and monitoring assets, to assisting in humanitarian relief efforts. Specifically, the model we created is being used to detect aircraft in satellite imagery, which can be useful in monitoring the flow of air traffic around the world. Other use cases include predicting deforestation levels in national parks, planning routes for oil pipelines across swaths of territory and more. With Maxar, we’ve generated some exciting outcomes in the speed and accuracy of the insights we deliver to customers. We’re continuing to work together to unlock new value from Maxar’s advanced geospatial datasets, and we believe we’re on the cusp of a new era in data-driven insights.
To learn more about Wovenware’s approach to “Insights as a Service,” we invite you to learn more on Wovenware’s blog.