AWS ground station satellite antenna in one of the company’s data centers at Boardman, Oregon.
Amazon
Microsoft will offer a new service called Azure Orbital that connects satellites directly to its cloud computing network, the company announced at its Ignite conference on Tuesday.
The service will be launched in “Private Preview” for a selected group of Micro .ft customers. Earlier this month, CNBC reported on Microsoft’s plans to challenge the ground station service available from Amazon Web Services. Amazon and Micro .ft are the two largest providers of cloud infrastructure, with remote data centers that can host websites and run applications using a variety of computing and storage services.
“With Microsoft’s low-latency global fiber network and access to a global scale, customers can quickly innovate from large satellite datasets,” Yves Pitshe, chief product manager for MicroSFT, wrote in a blog post. “The cloud is central to both remote operations and modern communications scenarios for collecting, processing and delivering excessive amounts of data from space.”
Pitts writes that Azure Orbital has signed satellite companies Emergent, Kratos, Kongsburg Satellite Services and Vyasat as partners.
Where Microsoft plans to build the first Azure orbital ground stations, most of which the company says are “already under construction.”
Micro .ft
Documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission last month outlined Microsoft’s intention to build a network of ground stations and show satellite operators the potential benefits of connecting to its Azure cloud. The FCC has allowed Microsoft Microsoft to demonstrate a proof-of-concept concept of the service, with the company planning to connect the Spanish imaging satellite to two ground stations – both located in Washington, Washington – to show that it can download satellite data directly. “Azure Cloud for immediate processing,” the documents said. Microsoft proposed building one of two ground stations at its data center in Quincy, Washington.
According to technology industry research firm Gartner, with 2019% with%, Amazon is leading the growing cloud-computing market, while Microsoft has about 18% share. Micros.ft’s Azure Orbital announcement comes almost two years after AWS launched the ground station.
Cloud infrastructure delivers most of Amazon’s operating operating revenue. In the case of Micro .ft, Azure is growing faster than other notable products, such as Windows.
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