Our Work

Blue Raster helps you tell your story through interactive
mapping technology. Make your message clear, exciting,
and user-friendly for both mobile and web platforms.

Cloud

Blue Raster Pioneering Imagery Management Technology and Delivery Workflows with ArcGIS

Many organizations prioritize the accessibility of imagery and image-derived products for visualization and analysis among both internal and external users. As such, efficient  management and delivery workflows are crucial for these organizations to fully harness the power of spatial data and maximize their product impact. Use cases for aerial images and raster data include land cover classification, urban planning, natural resource management, emergency response and disaster management, precision agriculture and conservation, environmental monitoring and change detection/climate change analysis.

Blue Raster specializes in utilizing the robust capabilities of GIS and cloud services to facilitate the seamless assembly, analysis, management and dissemination of multiresolution imagery, and raster data from different sources and timeframes. Our expertise helps organizations enhance their spatial data management and analysis capabilities.

Employing ArcGIS for Imagery Hosting, Analysis & Management

Empowered by cutting-edge technology, Blue Raster excels in tapping into the full potential of ArcGIS for image hosting, analysis, and delivery workflows across ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Pro, and ArcGIS Online. With ArcGIS Image Server and ArcGIS Image for ArcGIS Online, we enable organizations to host and conduct dynamic imagery analysis on an unprecedented scale.

The scalability and performance of ArcGIS Image Server redefines the boundaries of what is achievable in geospatial analytics. Additionally, by integrating imagery into the ArcGIS Online platform, organizations can create compelling and informative maps that facilitate a deeper understanding of their spatial data.

Providing On-Demand Imagery Delivery Services

We specialize in providing swift, on-demand collection and smooth delivery of imagery through versatile means including API keys, custom widgets, online user interfaces, and application plugins. Our expertise ensures that you have the necessary tools and support to cater to diverse requirements and preferences.

Whether you need quick access to specific imagery, or a tailored solution embedded within your applications, Blue Raster stands ready to assist, offering a range of flexible and efficient options to meet your unique needs.

Furthermore, we recognize the importance of seamless delivery workflows in ensuring timely access to critical imagery resources. Our solutions are designed to optimize delivery pipelines, minimizing latency and maximizing efficiency. Whether it's delivering imagery to remote field teams or integrating seamlessly with existing systems, we prioritize speed, reliability, and scalability to meet the dynamic needs of our clients.

Our commitment to innovation extends beyond just technology; it's ingrained in our culture. We're constantly exploring new ways to push the boundaries of what's possible, whether it's through advancements in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, or data visualization. By staying at the forefront of technological innovation, we empower our clients to stay ahead of the curve and achieve their objectives with confidence. Our teams of professionals are here to assist you in developing and deploying your delivery workflows.

Pioneering Collaborative Cloud-Based Imagery Management

For over a decade, Blue Raster has been working with clients and partners to deliver large volumes of imagery to support various geospatial workflows. Our cloud specialty has opened new frontiers for collaborative  management. Maximizing the cloud's scalability, organizations can now store, share, and analyze vast amounts of data in real-time. This not only streamlines internal processes but also facilitates effortless collaboration with external stakeholders.

Across the globe, our clients and partners are employing our services to manage and deliver their imagery to support their projects and organizational goals. Here are some examples:

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Transform Your Website with AI Services to Enhance Capabilities

In more recent times, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has marked a transformative shift in modern technology. As industries across the globe embrace the potential of artificial intelligence, it has become an integral force driving innovation and efficiency. From machine learning algorithms that optimize processes to natural language processing systems that enhance communication, artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how we interact with and harness the power of technology.

Employing the robust capabilities of Amazon Web Services (AWS), OpenAI (ChatGPT), Flowise and PostgreSQL, Blue Raster engineered a cutting-edge solution capable of processing various data types such as PDFs, text files, websites, and GitHub repositories. This solution is a key feature of our latest offering: an embeddable chatbot that allows website visitors to interact with data in a conversational manner, turning any website into a dynamic data-driven experience.

 

Implementation of RAG Architecture to Create Chatbot

Blue Raster recently integrated the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture into its systems. RAG is a cutting-edge model architecture that combines the strengths of both retrieval-based and generation-based AI to amplify the capabilities of conversational systems.

Key components of RAG include:

Retrieval-Based Approach: Utilizes a knowledge base to fetch pertinent information, ensuring the model delivers contextually accurate answers.

Generation-Based Approach: Employs generative capabilities to craft novel responses, especially when answers aren't directly available in the knowledge base.

Augmentation: Enhances the generative process by incorporating retrieved data, resulting in accurate and contextually relevant responses.

By fusing these elements, RAG overcomes the constraints of purely generative or retrieval-based models. It ensures factual and coherent interactions, making it an excellent fit for tasks requiring nuanced language understanding and generation.

 

Architectural Blueprint for Chatbot Deployment

In this streamlined workflow, developers commit code to the GitHub repository, triggering GitHub Actions to automate the building and pushing of a Docker image to AWS ECR. The Docker image is then deployed onto an EC2 instance where the application interfaces with the database. User interaction is facilitated through routing, with a Load Balancer efficiently managing traffic. The entire communication is secured through TLS termination, ensuring a robust and protected HTTPS connection throughout the process. This architecture guarantees high availability and security and streamlines updates and maintenance through an automated continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline, ensuring clients can receive dynamic and adaptable services.

Surging Forward with AI

The chatbot service is a testament to the efficiency and reliability of modern deployment strategies, incorporating various AWS services and GitHub within a CI/CD pipeline for seamless development and deployment processes. It is more than just a tool; it's a conversation starter, a problem solver, and a data navigator, all rolled into one intuitive package. With the implementation of the RAG model and a robust CI/CD pipeline, we ensure that your website is not only equipped with the latest in AI but also future-proofed against the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Integrating an AI chatbot into your web platform can revolutionize user experience and bolster your online capabilities. These intelligent virtual assistants offer instantaneous responses to user queries, ensuring round-the-clock availability and personalized interactions. Using natural language processing and machine learning algorithms,  chatbots can understand user intent, provide relevant information, and even execute tasks seamlessly. Its versatility spans from customer support and lead generation to product recommendations and content delivery, enhancing engagement and driving conversions.

Furthermore, these chatbots continuously learn from interactions, refining their responses and adapting to user preferences over time. This not only streamlines communication but also empowers businesses to gather valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points, facilitating informed decision-making and fostering long-term relationships with their audience.

 

Contact us today to explore how our AI solutions can transform your online presence and open a world of opportunities for your business.

 

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ArcGIS Monitor Maintains Healthy ArcGIS Enterprise for Collin County, TX

Blue Raster worked to deploy a well-architected ArcGIS Enterprise installation to support the growing GIS user base of Collin County, Texas. Just north of the Dallas – Fort Worth metropolitan area, Collin County has a rapidly growing population of over 1 million residents. With such a large and growing GIS practice to manage, the county looked to Blue Raster to install ArcGIS Monitor to aid in monitoring its GIS infrastructure and ensure that it stays up and running.

What is ArcGIS Monitor?

ArcGIS Monitor is a powerful tool from Esri that allows organizations to monitor the health of GIS infrastructure in real-time. It can help organizations identify and fix issues before they become major problems, saving time and money in the long run. This tool excels in:

  • Real-time monitoring of environments
  • Alerting and notifications for issues
  • Collection and analysis of performance data
  • Detailed resource utilization reporting
  • Monitoring of security events
  • Visualization of data in dashboards and reports

ArcGIS Monitor displaying performance metrics for Collin County's ArcGIS Enterprise

ArcGIS Monitor Provides Real-Time Performance Metrics for ArcGIS Enterprise

ArcGIS Monitor Helps Identify and Resolve Issues 

Blue Raster worked with Collin County to deploy a robust, well-architected installation of ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9.1 on-premises in 2022 and later added ArcGIS Monitor to maintain a healthy and stable environment. With Monitor, improved insights were apparent quickly with better visibility and quantification for issues related to Collin County's enterprise GIS. The tool saves time for GIS Supervisor Bret Fenster, providing a single location to monitor all components of ArcGIS Enterprise and make quick decisions based on real-time metrics.

"With ArcGIS Monitor, we’re able to assess the performance of our services and multi-server environment easily. Before we had Monitor, we had to RDP into each server to see exactly what was going on. Now, we can see CPU and RAM performance with one login and a well-crafted dashboard configured by our consultant, Blue Raster. "

- Bret Fenster, GIS Supervisor, Collin County

With improved visibility and insights into their ArcGIS Enterprise, Bret and his team were able to immediately address patterns they noticed with server performance and allocate more resources to the problem. The deeper level of metrics provided by ArcGIS Monitor helped Bret and team to address data and content governance with their internal customers, improving performance for all users of ArcGIS Enterprise.

ArcGIS Dashboard displaying metrics from ArcGIS Monitor

ArcGIS Monitor Displays Metrics Highlighting Need More Server Resources

"We’re able to determine where we need more resources immediately. For example, recently we noticed our hosting server began to consume more RAM (90%). We worked with our server team to get 12GB added to the VM. After the increase in RAM, the hosting server continued to use more RAM and motivated the team to look at ArcGIS Server manager and inventory the services. We noticed some new, unexpected layers published from our internal portal that were created by another team. We were able to contact that department and remove the services that were creating the impact and resolve the issue."

- Bret Fenster, GIS Supervisor, Collin County

ArcGIS Dashboard displaying metrics from ArcGIS Monitor

ArcGIS Monitor Displays Improved Performance of ArcGIS Enterprise after Increasing Server Resources & Addressing Data Publishing Governance

Is ArcGIS Monitor Right for You?

Collin County’s success with implementing ArcGIS Monitor for their ArcGIS Enterprise deployment demonstrates that the insights and resulting solutions stemming from the data collected and visualized provides value to the County’s GIS and IT teams. The ability to support observations with quantified metrics empowers Collin County’s team to maintain a performant enterprise GIS environment and reduce downtime. Blue Raster strongly recommends including Monitor in all new deployments of ArcGIS Enterprise or adding it to existing installations. If your organization would like better insights into your enterprise GIS environments, please explore our ArcGIS Monitor Page and Contact Us Today!

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What Are the Discovery, Execution, and Maintenance Phases of ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Migration?

If you’re thinking about deploying ArcGIS Enterprise on cloud environments then it’s important to know what the discovery, execution, and maintenance phases of ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration entail. At Blue Raster, we’re known for our extensive experience in deploying and managing cloud services and delivering top-notch ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration support. In fact, our employees hold the following certifications to ensure the smoothest ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration experience: 

  • Esri Enterprise System Design Professional 
  • Enterprise Geodata Management Professional  
  • Enterprise Administration Professional 
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network Select Consulting Partner 
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner 
  • AWS Certified Security Specialty 
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect 
  • Microsoft Partner Network 

Our certified team will collaborate with you at every stage of your ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration, so you’re always informed and onboard for every decision. We aim for every objective to meet your budget and scheduleno matter the cloud computing platform you choose to move forward with. 

We’ve broken down the discovery, execution, and maintenance phases of an ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration so you can have a better understanding of how hands-on our process is! 

The Discovery Phase of ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Migration

Before any cloud migration action can take place, our experts will meet with you to dive into your current architecture, GIS assets, and workflows. The discovery phase of an ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration allows us to understand how your organization is currently using GIS, as well as the ways you want to enhance its capabilities in the future. By determining what is currently working well for your organization and what is not, we’re able to: 

  1. Choose the right cloud computing platform and architecture  
  2. Define the type of scalability you need and pinpoint the solutions that will increase your performance levels 
  3. Control how you want your data to be accessed, used, and stored 

Most importantly, we will discuss together the fundamental ways that geospatial data and analysis support your operations. Once we feel like we have a good understanding of your organization and its needs, we will move on to the execution phase of the ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration process. 

The Execution Phase of ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Migration

When we’ve covered the critical bases of your organization, our certified professionals will craft a cloud migration plan that helps you accomplish all of your goals. If there are tools or workflows that are not working well for your organization, we will exclude them from the execution of the migration process.  

We will work hand-in-hand with your IT team and other key stakeholders throughout the execution phase of the ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration to ensure all of the cloud services integrate well with your existing systems and align with your overall technical roadmap. During the execution phase, we will focus on installing and deploying ArcGIS Enterprise and any other necessary or desired components that were decided upon during discovery. This will all be documented in your finalized architecture. Our team will also: 

  1. Assist with the configuration of user accounts and permissions 
  2. Implement a relational database management system as a datastore for GIS data 
  3. Set up a secure host for GIS administration 
  4. Ensure appropriate security measures and backups are in place 

The Maintenance Phase of ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Migration

After completing the execution phase, our experts are readily available to support you with IT trainings, ongoing consultation services, proactive monitoring and health checks, and on-demand support services for any technical issues that may arise when administering and using ArcGIS Enterprise in the cloud. The maintenance phase of ArcGIS cloud migration may be the third step, but it’s not the end of our partnership. We’re here for you and your team whenever you need us! 

Expert Guidance for Your ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Migration

Learn more about our ArcGIS Enterprise cloud migration plans and get started with our team today! 

Bringing Modern GIS Capabilities to Natural Lands

Since 1953, Natural Lands has dedicated time, energy, and funds to protecting open spaces and promoting biodiversity in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The nonprofit has worked tirelessly to preserve the two states' forests, wetlands, meadows, and farmlands so that future generations may appreciate and enjoy them for years to come. As a leading conservation organization that uses science-based approaches to protect some of the most valuable environmental areas, Natural Lands is no newcomer to using GIS to track acquired land, manage ecosystems, and engage communities in its conservation efforts.

Due to the ever-evolving capabilities of GIS, Natural Lands knew it would benefit from a partner who could help navigate and streamline its GIS operations and upgrade them to a more powerful GIS platform. Blue Raster was the perfect match.

Introducing ArcGIS Enterprise to Natural Lands

In order to enhance the nonprofit’s efforts, Blue Raster needed to first streamline its GIS operations. To do so, our team reviewed Natural Lands’ existing GIS architecture, datasets, and services, and proposed a migration strategy to ArcGIS Enterprise 10.9.1.

ArcGIS Enterprise was chosen for Natural Lands because of its:

  • Advanced spatial analysis tools
  • Streamlined data management capabilities
  • Ability to easily manage and analyze data related to land acquisition, ecological assessments, and restoration projects
  • Ability to communicate conservation work to the public, helping to raise awareness and build support for their efforts
ArcGIS Enterprise diagram

Kicking Off the Migration Process

Phase one of Natural Lands’ technology modernization began with our team establishing a Bastion host with ArcGIS Pro for Enterprise and Geodatabase Administration and proposing a strategy for backing up and exporting existing SQL Server databases and file geodatabases on the nonprofit’s existing server. This ensured a smooth and seamless migration experience, with minimal disruption to Natural Lands’ daily operations.

Once the migration was finished, our senior DevOps engineer, Scott Geistmann, installed, configured, and administered ArcGIS Enterprise Server Deployment 10.9.1, along with ArcGIS Portal, federated ArcGIS Server in a Hosting Role with ArcGIS Portal, and ArcGIS Data Store. Our team also set up Azure SQL Database Server and installed ArcGIS Pro, while advising on initial portal settings and configurations and proposing Azure Machine specifications. With these server improvements, Natural Lands was able to:

  • See an increase in performance for processors and storage capacity
  • Easily use the latest versions of ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro
  • Handle an increased workload and userbase
  • Access better support options—such as remote monitoring and management—with fewer maintenance requirements

Expert Guidance, Easy User Experience

Blue Raster’s professional support didn’t end with the successful migration to ArcGIS Enterprise. As a trusted GIS solutions provider, we delivered post-migration support and training to Natural Lands to guarantee everyone on the nonprofit’s team felt comfortable and informed when it came to the new enhancements. The training covered a range of topics, which included:

  • Managing the ArcGIS Enterprise Server
  • Overseeing Azure Cloud services and assets
  • Updating and publishing feature and image services
  • Administering ArcGIS Portal accounts—including user roles and permissions

With this new platform, Natural Lands can now access heightened GIS capabilities, making it easier for the nonprofit to manage their data and share it with the public efficiently and accurately. "We couldn't be more pleased with our ArcGIS Enterprise installation by Blue Raster. They guided us through the implementation process and provided top-notch support along the way,” shares Megan Boatright, GIS program director, Natural Lands.  “Blue Raster’s attention to detail and commitment to meeting our needs ensured a successful outcome—plus, the ability to access our geospatial data and tools from anywhere has been a game-changer."

Be On the Cutting Edge of GIS Capabilities

See how Blue Raster can help you surpass your competition with customized GIS solutions.

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