DigitalGlobe has entered into a direct access agreement and strategic alliance relationship for sales, marketing, and customer support, with European Space Imaging (EUSI) and Space Imaging Middle East (SIME).

The agreement is DigitalGlobe’s fourth international direct access program (DAP) agreement. The agreement provides for a direct access facility (DAF) to be located near Munich, Germany, and for joint sales and marketing of WorldView-1, WorldView-2, and other products and services within the European and Middle East markets. Commercial operations for the Munich DAF are expected to commence in the first quarter of 2010. Effective immediately, EUSI and SIME have also been appointed as authorized distributors of DigitalGlobe products and services for Europe and the Middle East. The direct access and strategic alliance agreement is subject to receipt of pending U.S. Government regulatory approvals.

DigitalGlobe is also reporting that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded DigitalGlobe a contract to enable a Rapid Delivery of Online Geospatial-Intelligence (RDOG).

DigitalGlobe is providing NGA with unclassified imagery-derived products and services in support of NGA’s mission to develop imagery and map-based intelligence solutions for U.S. national defense, homeland security and safety of navigation. Providing an industry-first solution that enables near real-time access to daily image collections, DigitalGlobe will use standard web services to enable rapid dissemination of the latest NextView-licensed imagery of specified areas to the National System for GEOINT (NSG) within 24 hours of collection. In addition to delivering web mapping services (WMS) for commercial imagery on a daily basis, DigitalGlobe will also provide a nearly cloud-free foundation layer of tonally balanced, country-wide, one-degree geo-cells on a new quarterly collection schedule.