One notable improvement has been in the overall manageability of the storage infrastructure resulting from a new file-sharing system from ADIC in Redmond, Wash., Trudel said. Not only does it require less time and effort on the part of the storage administrators, but "we're able to rapidly repurpose and/or expand storage to meet shifting production needs," Trudel said.

DigitalGlobe processes 105 satellite image strips per day. Each strip consists of multiple 10-square-mile images of the Earth. That number will expand to more than 400 strips per day when the company launches a second imagery satellite later this year.

The company plans to launch the second imagery satellite later this year and the third in 2008.

Core to DigitalGlobe's upgrade was its storage infrastructure, which was needed because the company doubled its data from 2004 to 2005.

Prior to moving to a storage-area network (SAN) architecture last year, DigitalGlobe said it used an inefficient direct-attached storage model, copying data from server to server along the production line, beginning with the raw imagery received from the satellite through to the finished products that are ready for electronic delivery.