Vince Winkel
Lomgmont Times-Call
October 27, 2014
Longmont’s Allsource Analysis making waves in intelligence community
An image of the Sinpo South Shipyard (Pongdae Boiler Plant) on North Korea’s east coast shows the newly identified submarine berthed within the facility’s secure boat basin. (DigitalGlobe/AllSource Analysis / Courtesy photo)
Longmont’s Allsource Analysis received international attention last week when one of its analysts reported that the company had discovered a new North Korean submarine.
The chief analytics officer of AllSource Analysis, Joseph Bermudez, based his findings on a review of commercial satellite imagery from 2010 until the present.
He wrote about it for 38 North, a website devoted to analysis of North Korea. It’s run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
"It is too early to identify the missions intended for this new class of submarine or the position it could occupy in the Korean People’s Navy’s future submarine forces," Bermudez reported. "If the design is successful and enters production as a patrol submarine, the new boat will have greater range, patrol time and weapons capability than the existing KPN fleet."
Satellite image shows bombing craters and destroyed buildings from U.S. airstrikes in Kobane, Syria, at the Turkish border. (DigitalGlobe/AllSource Analysis / Courtesy photo)
While Allsource is focused primarily on serving the needs of those in the financial and energy sectors, it’s also been featured recently on CNN for its analysis of Kobane, Syria, at the Turkish border. A month of intense fighting between Kurdish resistance fighters and Islamic State militants (ISIS) combined with heavy U.S. aerial attacks drastically changed the landscape.
Before and after satellite imagery show dramatic changes in the city over the last few weeks. Neighborhoods were entirely wiped out, refugees are seen setting up camps, along with hundreds of abandoned vehicles and mountains of rubble from destroyed buildings.
While all this exposure helps put Allsource on the map, analysis of military operations isn’t really the focus of the company.
"The government work isn’t an area we look at for business growth," explained Chuck Herring, Chief Marketing Officer at Allsource and one of its founders. "We do work as needed with security firms and the government … and it will be an ongoing effort."
Despite their recent media attention for analysis involving global hot spots like Syria and the always unpredictable North Korea, the Longmont company is focused primarily on the financial, energy and insurance sectors and on humanitarian organizations.
For example, let’s say you work in the energy sector. You need to know if an oil facility in Iraq, recently taken over by terrorists, is still producing oil. Analysts at Allsource can study all the resources at their disposal, primarily a lot of satellite imagery, to discover if the oil is still being pumped and if there is an increase or decrease in production. They study traffic patterns, the types of trucks in the area, and any related changes. What they see in a satellite image means more to them than most of us.
Closer to home perhaps you need to know if a competing oil company is still looking for oil or if they have found the black gold and are ready to produce.
AllSource Analysis Chief Marketing Officer Chuck Herring and CEO Stephen Wood pose for a portrait inside their nearly finished office Thursday, in Longmont. (Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call)
"We can tell a lot by looking at truck traffic," said Herring. "When an oil pad becomes operational and producing oil, we can see that in the images."
"There is a lot we can do with satellite imagery," Herring continued. "There is a lot of information coming through in those images. We can extract that information quickly. It lowers the costs of our customers to have it all come through us."
"Absolutely," said CEO and co-founder Stephen Wood. "There is this explosion of data, remote sensing, satellite imagery, and a lack of people who can take all that data and information and make it simple to understand."
Submarine discovery accidental
Allsource Analysis wasn’t searching for military secrets when it found what may be a new submarine in North Korea.
"We were working for a humanitarian organization," John Metzger said. He’s a member of the Allsource board, experienced in the world of satellite imagery and owner of Metzger Albee in Boulder.
"We’re monitoring North Korean political prisoner camps. During work on that project, we came across the submarine."
"Our name Allsource really describes it well. We get materials and images from all types of sources, a real variety," Metzger said. That includes aerial intelligence from airplanes, from companies like Airbus, satellite firms and from DigitalGlobe to name just a few.
"Governments want it, competitors want it. We make all this information accessible to them," Wood explained.
The company was launched this June by three former DigitalGlobe employees. Within a year, the company plans on having 15 full-time employees in Longmont, in addition to specialists who work remotely.
First board of directors
This week, Allsource Analysis will announce its first board of directors.
Its founding executives are CEO and Chairman Stephen Wood, Chief Analytics Officer Joseph Bermudez, Jr. and CMO Charles Herring. Outside directors are Peter Behrendt, Robert Bunting, Ryan Carr, Richard Herring and John Metzger.
After escaping from Soviet Bloc East Germany as a young man, Behrendt went on to a 26-year career at IBM before joining Exabyte to become its CEO and chairman.
Scientist, educator and serial entrepreneur Bunting co-founded the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Foundation, which began the commercialization program of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He is noted for work Intermap Technologies, Adam Aircraft, Space Imaging and DigitalGlobe.
Carr was a founding partner and chief investment officer at Sparta Asset Management, a high-performing, small-cap investment boutique. With some of the nation’s largest pension funds as its clients, Carr led the firm’s asset growth to over $750 million. Prior to Sparta, Carr was a senior portfolio manager at Oppenheimer & Co.
Herring served as a senior executive at Ball Aerospace in positions including CIO and president of the Space Systems Division. After 27 years with Ball, he became CEO of EarthWatch (later renamed DigitalGlobe), and CEO of Spectral Solutions.
Former journalist Metzger became one of the first trade editors in the field of GIS (Geographic Information Systems). He later established one of the nation’s first high-tech public and investor relations firms, now Metzger Albee in Boulder. His firm handled the media relations for satellite launches in the mid-’90s that helped kickstart the now burgeoning commercial market for “spy satellite” images.
Learn more about the company online at allsourceanalsis.com.
Satellite photo shows hundreds of cars, trucks and buses stacked at the border as refugees flee from Kobane. Syria, into Turkey. (DigitalGlobe/AllSource Analysis / Courtesy photo)
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