The Office of Systems Development (OSD) Ground Systems Division (GSD) intends to make a number of architectural upgrades to the GOES ground system components in an effort to extend the longevity of the system, increase operational reliability, combine functional components into a single architecture, and reduce long-term maintenance and operations costs. The Operational Ground Equipment (OGE) components supporting the GOES I-M and GOES NOP satellites need to be maintained at least through 2020. Given the need to maintain the OGE, an enterprise management system for the GOES constellation based on blade architecture has been designed and is currently being developed under the acronym of GOES Enterprise Managed System (GEMS). Blade alternatives have demonstrated reduced number of computer systems and footprint as well as increased I/O capacities in a scalable architecture. The planned architecture will significantly reduce ground system life-cycle costs, improve future standardization between component systems with an enterprise approach, standardize operation and maintenance of operational ground equipment, provide reliable operation with hot backup and fault-tolerant component systems, enhance IT security and provide the ability to perform system hardware and software upgrades without incurring long system down-times.

The intent of the new architecture is to have an enterprise managed system which could potentially host the entire GOES OGE components with a few exceptions. The first OGE component hosted within GEMS is the Rehosted Product Monitor (RPM) server. The primary functions of the RPM are to provide landmark registration and to monitor and analyze the quality of the image and non-image data in the GVAR data stream. RPMs reside at NOAA Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF), Wallops Command and Data Acquisition Station (WCDAS), Fairbanks Command and Data Acquisition Station (FCDAS), and Wallops Backup Unit (WBU), each capable of supporting one GVAR data stream at a time. Initially GEMS units hosting RPM servers will be deployed at WCDAS and NSOF. Other OGE components such as the Sensor Processing System (SPS), SPS Database Servers, Orbit and Attitude Tracking System (OATS) and Multi-Use Data Link (MDL) Receive System and Server (MRS&S) will follow in a phased approach.