Location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software services which use geographic data and information to provide services or information to users. LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, entertainment, work, personal life, etc. Commonly used examples of location-based services include navigation software, social networking services, location-based advertising, and tracking systems. LBS can also include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. LBS also includes personalized weather services and even location-based games.
Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., doing business as Esri, is an American multinational geographic information system (GIS) software company headquartered in Redlands, California. It is best known for its ArcGIS products. With a 40% market share, Esri is the world's leading supplier of GIS software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications.
Automatic vehicle location is a means for automatically determining and transmitting the geographic location of a vehicle. This vehicle location data, from one or more vehicles, may then be collected by a vehicle tracking system to manage an overview of vehicle travel. As of 2017, GPS technology has reached the point of having the transmitting device be smaller than the size of a human thumb, able to run 6 months or more between battery charges, easy to communicate with smartphones — all for less than $20 USD.
Automatic meter reading (AMR) is the technology of automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic, and status data from water meter or energy metering devices and transferring that data to a central database for billing, troubleshooting, and analyzing. This technology mainly saves utility providers the expense of periodic trips to each physical location to read a meter. Another advantage is that billing can be based on near real-time consumption rather than on estimates based on past or predicted consumption. This timely information coupled with analysis can help both utility providers and customers better control the use and production of electric energy, gas usage, or water consumption.
HCL Sametime Premium is a client–server application and middleware platform that provides real-time, unified communications and collaboration for enterprises. Those capabilities include presence information, enterprise instant messaging, web conferencing, community collaboration, and telephony capabilities and integration. Currently it is developed and sold by HCL Software, a division of Indian company HCL Technologies, until 2019 by the Lotus Software division of IBM.
Telematics is an interdisciplinary field encompassing telecommunications, vehicular technologies, electrical engineering, and computer science. Telematics can involve any of the following:
A tracking system, also known as a locating system, is used for the observing of persons or objects on the move and supplying a timely ordered sequence of location data for further processing.
A configuration management database (CMDB) is an ITIL term for a database used by an organization to store information about hardware and software assets. It is useful to break down configuration items into logical layers. This database acts as a data warehouse for the organization and also stores information regarding the relationships among its assets. The CMDB provides a means of understanding the organization's critical assets and their relationships, such as information systems, upstream sources or dependencies of assets, and the downstream targets of assets.
ORBCOMM is an American company that offers industrial internet and machine to machine (M2M) communications hardware, software and services designed to track, monitor, and control fixed and mobile assets in markets including transportation, heavy equipment, maritime, oil and gas, utilities and government. The company provides hardware devices, modems, web applications, and data services delivered over multiple satellite and cellular networks.
Telit Cinterion is an Internet of Things (IoT) Enabler company headquartered in Irvine, California, United States. It is a privately held company with key operations in the US, Brazil, Italy, Israel, and Korea.
Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductor chips for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. The company was founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and private industry. The company was renamed Atheros Communications in 2000 and it completed an initial public offering in February 2004, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol ATHR.
SkyBitz is an American company based in Herndon, Virginia, that provides machine to machine (M2M) products for the tracking and management of mobile assets. Parent company Telular Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Avista Capital Partners, an American private equity firm. SkyBitz is a remote asset tracking and information management service provider, specializing in real-time decision-making tools for companies with unpowered assets such as tractor-trailers, intermodal containers, chassis, rail cars, power generators, heavy equipment, and other assets. The company's asset tracking products are delivered using a software as a service (SaaS) model to commercial, transportation, military, and public safety customers, including sensitive shipment haulers of Arms, Ammunition and Explosives (AA&E) cargos. With the acquisition of commercial telematics companies Reltima and GPS North America in 2015, SkyBitz entered the local fleet management market.
Itron is an American technology company that offers products and services for energy and water resource management. It is headquartered in Liberty Lake, Washington, United States. The company's products measure and analyze electricity, gas and water consumption. Its products include electricity, gas, water and thermal energy measurement devices and control technology, communications systems, software, as well as managed and consulting services.
A vehicle tracking system combines the use of automatic vehicle location in individual vehicles with software that collects these fleet data for a comprehensive picture of vehicle locations. Modern vehicle tracking systems commonly use GPS or GLONASS technology for locating the vehicle, but other types of automatic vehicle location technology can also be used. Vehicle information can be viewed on electronic maps via the Internet or specialized software. Urban public transit authorities are an increasingly common user of vehicle tracking systems, particularly in large cities.
Tropos Networks is a wireless mesh networking company that provides hardware, embedded software and network management application software for building large scale wireless networks. These networks are used by utilities, municipalities, public safety agencies, mines and others that need to communicate with fixed and mobile assets, as well as mobile workers, in the field. The company was founded in 2000 by Narasimha Chari, Devabhaktuni "Sri" Srikrishna, Christian Dubiel and Jonathan Goldenstein. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. In June 2012, it was acquired by ABB Power Grids Group, now Hitachi Energy.
Carrier IQ was a privately owned mobile software company founded in 2005 in Sunnyvale, California. It provided diagnostic analysis of smartphones to the wireless industry via the installation of software on the user's phone, typically in a manner that cannot be removed without rooting the phone. The company says that its software is deployed in over 150 million devices worldwide.
Blue Sky Network is a global satellite technology company headquartered in San Diego, California. Founded in 2001, Blue Sky Network offers satellite tracking solutions to support fleet managers and operators monitoring their assets on land, sea, and in the air. Blue Sky Network solutions use the satellite network from Iridium Communications to provide customers with 100 percent global coverage. The company has also been an authorized Tier 1 Iridium Communications partner since 2002.
Digital Ocean, Inc., was founded in 1992 by Jeffery Alhom. Digital Ocean was a maker of wireless products from 1992 until it was disbanded in 1998.
Airbiquity Inc. was a business-to-business (B2B) software development and engineering company operating in the automotive telematics industry. Airbiquity's business model was to develop, deploy, and support the ongoing management of connected car programs for automotive industry customers.
