As the operator of the Smart Broker service, RSI has the following specific goals:
Leverage multi-user licenses. The vendors have provided a technique to dramatically lower cost by allowing multiple users to jointly
purchase data. RSI will create Smart Broker to provide the mechanism to exploit this license to allow it to enter more price-sensitive
markets such as municipalities, utilities, etc.
Increase market penetration. Use Smart Broker as a mechanism to break into non-traditional EO (Earth Observation) markets.
For Canada, this will be the local government and utility sectors. For the US, this will be the federal and local government as well as
the utility sectors.
Save on cost-of-sales. Use Smart Broker to provide a user-friendly front-end that will walk new customers through the set of questions
that are currently handled by CSRs.
Provide a self-serve interface. Use Smart Broker to provide an easily accessible mechanism (i.e., web site) where potential customers
can discover products that meet their application needs. This goal is to leverage rules stored in models about the user and the application to
provide this capability.
Space/processing brokering. Provide a mechanism to combine different but overlapping data needs, i.e., overlap in terms of spatial coverage
with a raw data product but also overlapping in terms of product generation steps. Enable a client for an information product to pay part of the
acquisition costs for a user who simply wants to get imagery.
Has made the Smart Broker system available to the CGDI community to exploit.