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E-Space SAS in Toulouse, France serves as a center for three main pillars of innovation: systems architecture — including payload system integration — product strategy and product development.
“E-Space SAS is a catalyst for radical innovation and development,” said Karim Michel Sabbagh, E-Space SAS Managing Director, Europe and Middle East Lead. “Building technical, strategic and product focused centers of excellence will enhance our ability to tackle complex challenges, leverage synergies and deliver high value to European customers.”
Systems integration
Alessandro Modigliana, head of systems architecture for E-Space SAS, says the Toulouse office will be a center of excellence for systems architecture and communications payload integration.
“Our focus will be on the payload technology roadmap, concept development and architecture definition, execution of advanced projects on critical technology products, end-to-end integration and validation of the communications systems in the lab, in the field and on-orbit demonstration,” he says. “That includes our highly integrated and distributed payload active antenna, our digital processor architecture, our optical satellite links and upcoming technologies for future enhancement and services.”
With the main integrations being those between the internal hardware and software related to the spacecraft, Modigliana says a key goal is ensuring strong communication across the teams working on the project.
Product development
As E-Space develops its revolutionary sustainable low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite system to create a new class of ubiquitous, real-time IoT services, the Toulouse-based product team is busy conducting market research, talking to potential customers and reviewing industry trends.
“We already have a strong indication of how much interest there is in our solution,” says Lucas Elicegui, director of Product & Business Development at E-Space. “We are at a tipping point where the NewSpace sector is intersecting with the Internet of Things (IoT) sector, and the potential is enormous. Our job on the product team is translating the potential of E-Space disruptive technology and assets into compelling solutions for customers, bringing business value to them and clearly articulating the return on investment.”
Elicegui adds that the product design is moving quickly, with end-user terminals that will go far beyond the typical “beep IoT” device available today — and predicts that E-Space technology will have the potential to leapfrog legacy terrestrial IoT technologies.
“The focus is all about the customers who will benefit from this technology,” he says. “It’s exciting to be part of this at the beginning; we take what we learn during this development phase and build it into the solutions and services we’ll be offering.”
Pursuing highly innovative technology and using the hyper-scale model to bring things to market quickly and at scale are central pillars to the E-Space philosophy. That will allow the company to launch products successfully and have in place processes for quick-turn updates to respond to changing market needs.
Product strategy
Another key element is defining our vision, goals and roadmap for the E-Space technology. Developing a solid product strategy helps to ensure our solution is developed in a way that continuously meets the needs of the target market.
“This is also an ongoing effort leading up to and after product launch,” Elicegui says. “It’s particularly important for a company like E-Space because we know that what we’re developing is a core technology focused on connectivity, but our goal is to provide more than that. We will focus on turnkey solutions encompassing hardware IoT, connectivity and digital platforms.”
And, he says, that’s only the beginning.
As part of the E-Space product strategy, the company is developing a vision that clearly describes how the hardware, software and service offerings will be developed and made available to the market.
Elicegui notes that the product plan for E-Space has a lot of room for future developments as the use cases, customer base and demand for Smart-IoT solutions continue to expand.
“Our agility and customer-driven approach will help us regularly update our roadmap to reflect changes in the market and the needs of our customers,” he says.
