Using machine learning to save money on cloud data storage

In the 18 years that DigitalGlobe has been operating Earth imaging satellites, we have collected over 100 PB of imagery about our changing planet. For most of that time, this vast amount of data was stored in a series of tape libraries running in our data centers. But in 2015, DigitalGlobe kicked off a project to modernize: moving the entire imagery archive to the cloud. We aimed to optimize our IT costs while serving our customers better by putting our archive where they were already working. In collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), we used AWS Snowmobile, essentially a datacenter in a ruggedized semi-trailer truck, to transfer our archive to Amazon's cloud.