Describe Azure Orbital Ground Station key benefits
Azure Orbital Ground Station addresses the market challenges that create a high barrier to entry for Contoso. On top of that, Azure Orbital Ground Station enables Contoso to create a new business model based on consumption (the OPEX model) rather than upfront cost (the CAPEX model).
Key differentiators and benefits
Contoso decides to adopt Azure Orbital Ground Station. Let’s look at the key reasons why:
A global network of ground stations: Rather than negotiating access to a limited number of ground stations or building their own, Contoso can leverage Microsoft, KSAT, USEI, and Viasat RTE ground stations.
OPEX model: Azure Orbital Ground Station allows Contoso to downlink data and only pay for what they use with any antenna in the global AO Ground Station network.
Simple pricing structure: Because Microsoft doesn’t differentiate between narrow and wide bands, there’s no price difference based on how Contoso chooses to downlink, simplifying the pricing structure.
Thriving partner ecosystem: Microsoft partners bring their own expertise to AO Ground Station, and they enable a wide range of solutions. Contoso can leverage a rich digital platform to virtualize ground stations and scale their business and global infrastructure using Azure.
AI/ML and geospatial data sets: With AO Ground Station, the earth-observation data Contoso’s satellites collect can be stored on the cloud and processed via geospatial data sets on Azure.
Azure Orbital Ground Station makes it possible for Contoso to downlink, process, and analyze space data from its satellite constellation without costly capital investments in their own ground stations. This then allows Contoso to provide a managed service to their end customers by leveraging and reselling Azure Orbital Ground Station and digital ground segments, unlocking an operating expense (OPEX) model.