Omnitracs Pursues a Software Focus with New Trucking Fleet Platform
By Jim Beach
A key to Omnitracs new software platform is that it is “hardware agnostic.” Users can run the software on whichever kind of device best suits their needs. Photos: Jim Beach
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The recent announcement of Omnitracs’ new computing platform, Omnitracs One, is the latest reflection of the trend by technology providers to move from closed, proprietary systems – those in which their software runs on their proprietary hardware – to open systems, in which hardware choices depend on the users’ needs and preferences.
Describing the systems as “hardware agnostic” in opening remarks at the Omnitracs Outlook 2018 user conference in Nashville on Feb. 26, Omnitracs CEO Ray Greer said the focus should be on the software, rather than the hardware, and the company’s new platform would focus on providing “software as a service.”
Such a platform “addresses what the industry has been moving toward,” he said, with greater integration of products. As the industry has changed, the segmentation of the market into distinct types has blurred. Where matching trucks and customers for irregular route long hauls had been the focus of much of Omnitracs’ original product, more fleets are interested in managing other segments as well.
Omnitracs’ Evolving Fleet Software
In remarks to trucking journalists at the conference on Feb. 27, Greer said the new platform represents the “evolution of the company’s portfolio,” saying it allows their customers the flexibility to make use of the best capabilities of all the company’s products.
The new platform provides customers a unified source for fleet management, as opposed to a company needing to run several single-purpose solutions.
In a product review, Kevin Haugh, Omnitracs chief product and strategy officer, described Omnitracs One as “the next generation software platform” and that the company was in the process of bringing varied technologies under one umbrella. In a follow-up, he added, “At the most …Read the rest of this story
