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Daylight Transport, a leading transportation and logistics company, experienced rapid growth over the years, leading to an increased transition to cloud infrastructure. The company was already security-conscious, understanding the major risks facing the industry, particularly the devastating potential of a ransomware attack. However, they felt their existing Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) was too reactive and didn't provide the necessary information and visibility. They received alerts but no answers, leading to hours spent investigating these alerts. At times, a team of three employees had to work through over 1,000 alerts sent back from their MSSP each week. The MSSP also didn't provide monitoring and visibility across Daylight Transport’s environment, particularly in the cloud. To get more coverage, they would have needed to send additional logs from their Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), increasing both their MSSP and data transfer costs. As a result, the company decided it was time for a change to align with its more proactive security goals.

FIA Tech, a leading technology provider to the exchange traded derivative industry, faced a significant challenge in 2021. After announcing a $44 million investment by ten leading banks to fund its strategic growth, the company had to deal with increased security requirements. Pat Lefler, the senior vice president of risk and information security, and his team developed a three-pronged approach to increase visibility into its endpoints, network, and cloud services. They set up new endpoint protection with Carbon Black, SIEM and log file aggregation with Sumo Logic, and integrated Palo Alto’s Prisma through Panorama, as well as their cloud security signals from Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS). However, they lacked the resources to monitor the myriad alerts they were receiving. They needed a Security Operations Center (SOC) that would integrate well with FIA Tech’s existing tech and could start monitoring quickly, given the rapid growth of the organization.

GreenSky, a leading fintech company, was grappling with the challenge of phishing, one of the most pressing security concerns for the organization. Despite having an extensive phishing education and awareness program in place, the company was still vulnerable to potential phishing attempts. The company's Vice President of IT Security and Business Continuity, Lori Temples, and her team had to dedicate a significant portion of their workday to phishing, leaving them with less time to focus on more strategic projects. They had invested in a tool to automate some of the analysis of potential phishing emails, but it lacked human touch and required the GreenSky team to play an active role in the day-to-day anti-phishing efforts. The team needed a solution that could efficiently manage phishing investigations, allowing them to focus on other strategic initiatives.

Sappi Europe, a division of Sappi Limited, is a leading global provider of pulp, paper, packing, and sustainable wood fibre products and solutions. Despite its dominant position in the market, the company faced significant challenges in optimizing its supply chain and improving customer service. The increasing supply in the market resulted in overcapacity, necessitating cost reduction and a greater customer focus. Sappi also faced mounting pressures to digitize operations, with their supply chain being a key area of focus. A significant challenge was that 50% of their customer service enquiries were related to the status of shipments, demanding a considerable amount of time and administrative effort.

World Oil Corp, a company that recycles, produces, and transports vital petroleum products and provides important environmental services in California and throughout the western United States, faced a significant challenge in 2018. The Federal EPA introduced a requirement that all hazardous waste manifests be submitted through the RCRAInfo site. This transition to the online database came with hefty fees for manifests submitted via mail or as a scanned image. World Oil found itself in a time crunch situation, needing a technology partner that could process their thousands of backlogged manifests to meet the EPA deadline. The company was at risk of incurring substantial costs and potential penalty payments from the EPA if they failed to meet the deadline.

Yuma Environmental Services (YES Management, Inc.), a fully permitted Waste Transfer Facility, was faced with a significant challenge when the Federal EPA mandated that all hazardous waste manifests be submitted through the RCRAInfo site in July 2018. This transition to the online database came with substantial fees for manifests submitted via mail or as scanned images. YES Management, Inc. provides simple, cost-effective solutions for various Non-RCRA and Non-Hazardous Waste Streams. However, the new requirement posed a significant financial burden and operational challenge for the company, as it needed to format its customer's manifest data to ensure the lowest possible fees from the EPA.

The world’s largest construction equipment manufacturer, with one of its most vital plants located in Oxford, MS, faced a potentially catastrophic situation when a devastating tornado struck the plant. The facility, which produces 1.1 million industrial couplings each month for use in almost every bulldozer, dump truck, and excavator the company produces, was directly in the path of the tornado. The disaster threatened not only the lives of the employees but also the company-wide production, putting the organization at risk of the most severe production crisis in their history. The challenge was to ensure the safety of the employees and minimize the impact on the company's operations.

Road logistics operators in the United States often face revenue loss due to the inability to operate in severe weather conditions, particularly in Northern states. Autonomous trucks, such as those developed by Embark Trucks, have the potential to transform the industry, but they face their own challenges. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) rely on sensing technologies like LiDAR, radar, and optical cameras to collect visual data from their surroundings, which is then combined with maps and algorithms to make decisions. However, even the most advanced sensing technology can struggle with accurate detection and interpretation of road conditions in adverse weather. Embark needed not only on-road testing but also accurate and complete historical weather datasets to fully understand the implications of such conditions on its self-driving solution.

KUBRA, a leading provider of cloud-based customer experience management solutions, faced a challenge with their Storm Center power outage map solution. The Storm Center, a mobile-friendly platform, allows users to visualize the impacts of severe weather on their local utility or telecom provider. However, as the popularity of the feature grew, KUBRA needed a weather data provider that could both enhance the outage mapping experience and handle the large volume of clients they were serving, which was over 61 million meters and growing. The provider needed to offer developer-friendly radar layer integration for improved visuals, expanded layer options such as lightning, tropical cyclones, forecast precipitation, storm tracking, and storm cells, and scalability to allow for great fluctuations in traffic/demand due to extreme weather events.

A large multinational corporation with 11 divisions, including agricultural solutions, was grappling with the increasing climate volatility, particularly extreme weather events and persistent drought conditions. These were raising new concerns and creating challenges for strategic planning. The company was seeking better tools for a more uncertain world and a partnership that would jointly inform strategic decision-making. The first challenge was to increase the resilience of the supply of seeds and crops for buyers while improving the efficiency of producing new crop varieties at scale. The second challenge was to evaluate how the climate is expected to change over the next 10-20 years for two chosen crop locations, the India tomato seed and the Italy leek seed — and identifying alternative expansion sites. The third challenge was to identify “tipping points” for the company’s portfolio.

A leading global investment manager, with $9.7 billion of assets under management and 3 million acres across 600 properties in 10 countries, faced the challenge of assessing climate and water risk across its land-focused portfolio. The portfolio primarily consisted of permanent crops like pistachios, almonds, and wine grapes, which have long life cycles and require extensive planning. The team needed a reliable platform that could provide detailed insights into properties and potential threats to crops, as well as conduct a portfolio-wide analysis. The company also sought to understand how climate change would shape risks and emerging opportunities across over 2 million acres of land holdings globally and beyond, to new potential investments.

A leading producer of roofing materials was facing a challenge in understanding the forthcoming demand during the hurricane season. The company's demand was largely weather-based, with a surge in need for roofing materials following major storms as people, companies, and governments sought to rebuild homes and livelihoods. The company needed more detailed information to inform its manufacturing decisions, including the quantity and type of roofing material to produce. The challenge was to accurately predict the impact of the 2022 hurricane season on the demand for building materials, to enable better supply planning based on anticipated demand.

ABS Wavesight, a maritime software as a service (SaaS) company, was seeking to improve its risk management platform, ABS My Digital Fleet™, by integrating high-resolution historical and forecast weather data. The company aimed to provide actionable insights to its users to help them understand and lower fuel consumption, improve bunker costs, and reduce carbon intensity levels. Additionally, ABS Wavesight wanted to highlight the potential structural impacts from weather exposure during a ship’s voyage to better understand and mitigate risk. The challenge was to find a suitable partner that could provide accurate and hyperlocal weather data that could be seamlessly integrated into their existing platform.

Anglian Water, the largest water and water recycling company in England and Wales, faced significant challenges in managing weather data. The company's operations required a large number of weather data sets to inform decision-making, but the multiple weather data providers they relied on were complicated and inconsistent. This led to data discrepancies that affected decision-making processes and brought financial and administrative challenges. Additionally, the different providers required data to be collected in various ways, which was technically demanding and time-consuming. These issues prompted the company to streamline its operations by replacing most of its previous providers.

The Swiss Academic Space Initiative (ARIS), an educational association founded by students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH-Zurich) in 2017, is training future engineers and project managers for the growing aerospace market. The association, which now includes students from six different Swiss universities, aims to place a small-scale satellite in orbit using an in-house developed bi-liquid launcher within the next decade. To achieve this, ARIS needs to conduct in-orbit experiments and research, and regularly participate in international competitions with other aerospace engineering student organizations. However, the launch and recovery of spacecraft are significantly affected by Earth's weather conditions, including temperature, wind speed and direction, rain, hail, lightning, cloud cover, and electric fields. ARIS needed accurate weather data to conduct flight simulations, assess initial conditions in the launch area, and estimate the rocket's highest height, landing location, and the danger zone for people on the ground.

Clouds play a crucial role in regulating Earth’s climate, and understanding their microphysics is key to more accurate climate projections. However, clouds and cloud-aerosol interactions are major sources of uncertainties in these projections. Questions such as how clouds will change in a warming climate and their influence on Earth’s radiation budget are yet to be fully answered. The Atmospheric Physics group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) is dedicated to studying the formation and evolution of clouds, particularly cloud-aerosol interactions. Their project, CLOUDLAB, aims to improve understanding of cloud microphysical processes and precipitation formation. However, the data collection process for cloud particles, wind, and aerosol concentration has evolved over the years, with each method presenting its own challenges. Ground-based measurements were influenced by the ground and blowing snow, while measurements on a cable car and tethered balloons offered limited vertical structure and location possibilities.

Severe weather events often cause significant damage to buildings, accounting for about a quarter of home insurance claims in the UK. The challenge lies in validating these claims accurately and efficiently. Home Repair Network (HRN), an independent contractor manager in the UK's property damage industry, specializes in managing networks of approved local surveyors, tradespersons, and building contractors. They streamline the process of handling less complex building damage claims for both insurance companies and homeowners. However, the process of validating weather-related damages can be complex and time-consuming, requiring precise and dependable assessment of the damages.

The defence sector has always been significantly impacted by weather conditions, often determining the outcome of pivotal battles throughout history. Today, most military forces closely monitor the weather to avoid risks, ensure weaponry and vehicle performance, and increase operational success. However, the data from national meteorological services and traditional weather forecasting methods often fall short in providing accurate data, especially from the lowest part of the atmosphere where hazardous events form. Satellites, ground stations, and radars can only take remote measurements, while balloons and aircraft are limited to short timeframes and specific locations. Furthermore, national services cover limited domains and use different weather models, leading to inconsistencies and inaccuracies in weather forecasts. The military needs a more reliable and accurate weather forecasting solution to ensure the success of their operations.

Navily, a digital platform for recreational boaters, was facing challenges in providing accurate and timely weather forecasts to its users. The app, which serves as a cruising guide, booking platform, and sailing community, was relying on a weather data provider that was not delivering precise forecasts due to its reliance on a single weather forecast model. This lack of precision was a significant issue as weather conditions are paramount to sailing, defining the success and safety of a journey at sea. The decision of where to anchor is heavily influenced by weather conditions, and unfavorable or rapidly changing conditions can lead to accidents, potentially putting passengers' lives at risk. Navily's goal was to simplify this decision-making process for its users by providing a recommendation score for each anchorage, taking into account user ratings, the weather forecast, and the natural protection offered by the anchorage. However, the lack of accurate weather data was hindering this process.

Schweizer Hagel, a leading provider of agricultural insurance coverage in Switzerland, France, and Italy, faced the challenge of accurately assessing environmental risks to agricultural crops due to weather events. The company needed to determine insurance premiums that were both equitable for policyholders and adequate to cover insured losses. This required precise local weather information, including historical data spanning up to 30 years, and parameters related to drought, heavy rain, hailstorms, lightning, and storms. The company was in search of a reliable weather data solution that offered flexibility, comprehensive weather parameters, and access to historical weather data. Additionally, Schweizer Hagel required a provider that offered reliable customer service to address specific issues and inquiries promptly and proficiently.

Spottitt, a cloud-based solution provider, leverages satellite data and advanced AI models to offer insights for the energy, utility, and infrastructure sectors. The company's services are crucial in identifying potential points of failure in critical infrastructure such as transmission grids, pipelines, and substations, and in developing strategies to minimize downtime and mitigate the risk of catastrophic damages. However, extreme weather events like heatwaves, severe cold snaps, heavy rainfall, and windstorms pose significant threats to infrastructure, leading to equipment damage, power outages, wildfires, and safety risks for power grids and utility pipelines. Additionally, the performance and efficiency of renewable energy systems are dependent on weather conditions. Therefore, there was a need for a solution that could provide high-resolution weather information to monitor rapidly changing weather and climate conditions around critical infrastructure.

Stadtwerke München, one of the largest energy and infrastructure companies in Germany, was facing challenges in accurately forecasting solar power production. The production of solar power and other renewable energies is highly dependent on weather conditions, making it difficult to predict the amount of electricity that can be produced. This unpredictability posed a problem for Stadtwerke München's day-to-day electricity trading business and the integration of solar power into the electricity market. Inaccurate forecasts could lead to increased costs as balancing energy, usually purchased at a high price, would have to be used if there was a deviation from the specified amount of electricity that a company could provide. Furthermore, accurate power forecasts are essential for the successful and economical integration of renewables into the electricity market, especially as solar power and other renewables continue to expand.

Toyota, a leading automotive company, is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and conserving the environment. As part of its 'Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050', the company aims to reduce CO2 emissions, protect water resources, boost recycling, and conserve biodiversity. One of the key areas of focus is the operations sector of its European plants, where the company aims to eliminate CO2 emissions and reduce energy costs. The challenge lies in managing the energy consumption of these plants, which is directly influenced by weather conditions such as outside temperature, humidity, and wind. These factors affect the ambient temperature inside the facilities, which must be kept stable for the equipment to function properly. Furthermore, as the factories transition to renewable energy sources, their supply capabilities become sensitive to weather variations. Therefore, accurate weather forecasts are crucial for effective planning of energy systems.

Unmanned aerial vehicles such as drones and future autonomous air taxis lack an onboard pilot who can respond directly to weather changes and impacts. The response to weather changes is instead controlled by software and autopilot. This necessitates the availability of live weather data during a flight and weather forecast data for safe and efficient pre-flight planning. If the weather poses increased or unacceptable flight risks, the flight route or departure time needs to be adjusted accordingly. This challenge is further complicated by the need for industries without aviation expertise, such as agriculture, logistics, traffic management, and surveillance, to operate drones safely and efficiently in a commercial context.

The Australian Office of National Intelligence (ONI) was established in 2018 with the aim of ensuring Australia has an agile, integrated intelligence enterprise to meet evolving security challenges. As part of its commitment to innovation, ONI partnered with Spire to develop and deploy a CubeSat with advanced machine learning capabilities. The challenge was to efficiently understand and process the large influx of data sent to Earth from space. Traditional methods of data processing were proving to be inefficient and resource-intensive, burdening ground stations and other infrastructure. The goal was to develop a system that could autonomously prioritize downloads, direct sensors, and provide actionable insights.

DeepSea, a leading AI-powered maritime entity, was faced with the challenge of enhancing its vessel-specific performance models with a highly accurate and detailed source of ocean weather data. The goal was to predict the impact of wind, waves, currents, and other nautical phenomena on fuel consumption. However, the task was not without its difficulties. A significant 80% of the world's oceans remain unmapped and unobserved, presenting a considerable gap in the data required for accurate predictions. Additionally, the data on ocean wind and wave conditions that is available is often inconsistent. This is because it is gathered from instruments deployed on buoys and traveling ships, leading to discrepancies in wind-weather observations.

The U.S. Space Force Space System Command (SSC) was facing a significant challenge in their space technology development portfolio. Traditional methods for testing technologies in orbit were proving to be expensive and time-consuming. However, on-orbit demonstration is a critical step in proving technology readiness. The SSC, through their Science and Technology Directorate (SSC/ZAD), was in need of a solution that could provide a low-cost platform for testing technologies in orbit. They required a solution that could rapidly integrate and operate science and technology experiments in space. The specific mission was to test EnerSys® ZeroVolt™ 18650 battery cells in orbit, which required a platform that could accommodate the integration of these battery cells and facilitate their operation in space.

Jacobs, a leading provider of technical, professional, and construction services, was faced with the challenge of testing and demonstrating a new type of commercial space-based Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) onboard a Spire 3U satellite. Traditional methods for testing technologies on-orbit were proving to be expensive and time-consuming. However, on-orbit demonstration was a critical step to prove technology readiness. Jacobs saw an opportunity to reduce risk, maintain control, save time, and decrease costs by hosting its payloads on Spire’s 3U satellite buses. The challenge was to find a low-risk, highly secure, cost-effective and rapid path to orbit.

The Company, a US-based IT services firm, relied heavily on cold email outreach as its primary sales channel. Over the years, the company expanded from 2 to 45 mailboxes and ran numerous email campaigns. However, they began to encounter significant issues with their email domain. Their open rate and delivery rate started to plummet rapidly, with most of their emails ending up in spam folders. The company was unsure of the cause of these issues and sought assistance from Folderly, an email marketing solution provider. The challenge was to identify the root cause of the problem, restore the health of the existing domain, and ensure the smooth running of their email campaigns.

The United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) relies heavily on the World Magnetic Model (WMM) for a variety of essential public and military systems, including mobile navigation applications, surveying tools, antennas, solar panels, and GPS. The WMM is a representation of the Earth’s magnetic field, and its accuracy is crucial for the functioning of these technologies. The data for the WMM was being collected by the European Space Agency Swarm mission, which was launched in 2013 and was expected to conclude in 2021. Given the impending conclusion of the Swarm mission and the critical importance of the WMM, the NGA launched the MagQuest competition to find sustainable, reliable, and accurate data collection alternatives for the future.