I-Cubed maps out multidimensional future

Jacob Grothe, a geographic information systems specialist and cartographer, works in i-Cubed’s office in Fort Collins. i-Cubed specializes in creating, packaging and hosting geospatial data for a wide range of commercial and government clients. Jonathan Castner

Dan Cook
Think Intel, and you’ll have an idea of how Fort Collins-based i-Cubed LLC anonymously has touched millions of people.

The company uses satellite and aerial imagery to power and enhance myriad products and services. But you’ll never see the i-Cubed logo on your evening newscast or the map you download.

During the High Park fires in summer 2012, i-Cubed worked with news media outlets to create aerial maps of the fires. Its technology allowed the news consumer to zero in on specific burn areas, or to watch the progress of the flames. So accurate were the images that one i-Cubed employee who was blocked from visiting property in the fire’s line was able to see that his home had survived — but his barn had burned to the ground.

Indeed, i-Cubed has been a major player in satellite weather coverage for news stations for years. But its products and services are used in many more markets, with hundreds of different applications.

Founded in 1995, i-Cubed specializes in creating, packaging and hosting geospatial data for a wide range of commercial and government clients. Through partnerships with image-gathering sources and its own proprietary products and services, i-Cubed and its technology are in demand by the military, the utilities industry, oil and gas exploration companies, environmental management firms, the transportation sector, and on and on. Anywhere that Earth imagery, map data, and highly detailed geospatial information can be applied.

“We provide parts of things that everybody does,” said marketing director Jeff Dahlke. “Our work is embedded in a lot of other people’s stuff.”

While data for televised weather maps was an early application of the i-Cubed technology, the 64-employee company has come far from its roots.

Its founding inspiration came when co-founder Russell Cowart saw a need to simplify access to and utilization of satellite imagery.

Lots of footage of Planet Earth had been gathered by satellites and airplanes. But much of it was randomly stored, unenhanced — huge potential, but no one to extract that potential. That’s where i-Cubed came in.

“Initially we were primarily an image-processing and services company,” Cowart said.

I-Cubed could locate the images a client requested, prepare them for use and follow up. As more service providers enter the market, i-Cubed evolved.

“We developed our own enterprise-to-software offerings, primarily as software-as-a service, or SaaS, cloud-based services that we offered our clients years before these terms were even buzzwords,” he said.

Along the way, i-Cubed scored major contracts with customers seeking a better solution for mapping requirements. In the late 1990s, the fledgling company landed a major contract with Space Imaging (which became GeoEye and then was acquired by Longmont-based DigitalGlobe Inc.) to create enhanced digital elevation models. The Organization of American States contracted with i-Cubed for land-use mapping and evaluation services, and the owners of cellular networks found i-Cubed’s Clutter products to be the right fit for cellular network planning.

During that time, i-Cubed initiated a partnership with Spot Image (now Astrium GEO-Information Services) that has continued to the present. Meanwhile, i-Cubed was selected to participate in The Millennium Mosaic Project with DigitalGlobe, “the first seamless mosaic of the entire U.S.,” Cowart said. Geospatial contracts with Mapquest and Yahoo! followed.

As demand shifted for even more complex mapping systems and solutions, i-Cubed remained on the leading edge of its industry. It had carved out an impressive niche among news organizations, at one point providing imagery and related services to about 80 percent of the industry, according to i-Cubed imagery solutions consultant Jeff Porter. It then began to move more aggressively into software to manage imagery for customers. A 2002 contract with the Army Corps of Engineers launched its now industry-standard software DataDoors; that contract continues today.

In 2007, its expansive mission found strong support from strategic partner Astrium, which became an investor in the company. The Astrium partnership includes direct access to Astrium’s satellite images, giving i-Cubed a critical resource it previously lacked. Esri, a world leader in geographic information systems, also took a financial position with the company.

While i-Cubed remains a separate privately held company, the strategic investments of players like Astrium and Esri represent a solid foundation for i-Cubed’s ongoing initiatives that push the envelope on mapping technology.

So while i-Cubed remains an unsung hero to the users and lovers of richly detailed maps, nightly weather forecasts and online house-hunters, the company is well known to those in need of clear, multi-dimensional land images in a wide array of industries.