In an effort to streamline the process of swiftly transitioning new satellite imagery and satellite-derived research products into the operational forecasting environment, the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) has opted to translate data into a format readable by the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS). The Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) is employed in National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices across the United States as the main mechanism for ingesting, decoding, and displaying real-time weather information. There were three prerequisites required for creating and transmitting cutting-edge, operationally-useful research products: understanding how AWIPS reads and processes weather data, particularly related to satellite imagery and associated derived products, finding a mechanism, the Local Data Manager (LDM), to handle data transfer between CIMSS and the NWS offices, and assuring that data remains reliable and consistent. CIMSS recognizes that as technology changes in the NWS, it will be important to stay modern and reevaluate the approach. The most notable change in the short-term is the advent and introduction of the next generation of AWIPS, AWIPS II. AWIPS II promises to offer more flexibility to the research sector in making modifications for ingesting and displaying new weather data at the NWS. In the longer term, AWIPS II will eventually need to handle and render new data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series (GOES-R), which is an issue to be addressed via GOES-R Proving Ground activities. In addition, it will force a change in the format of training exercises developed with the Weather Event Simulator (WES).