GPS Systems To See Greater Traction This Year

The GPS navigation system is gaining increasing prominence, especially in the BPO sector, where the safety of employees is at an increasing risk. The tracking system helps check the status of vehicles real-time, ensuring that the employees’ security is not compromised. It will soon be available with detailed maps of India.

The Auto Expo'08 saw not less than 10 GPS navigation products launched, but is it something that is just being talked about a little too much, or will the country really take to it, as is anticipated?

GPS, What Is It?

GPS is an abbreviation for Global Positioning System, which was used in the early 1970s by USA during the ‘Cold War’, to track the military and navy movements during covert operations. For the same reason, till the 1990s we had around 14 satellites launched in to space by USA.

The term satellite navigation and GPS became popular in the late 1990s as the US government commercialised this service so that every citizen could have access to the same. Many companies today offer GPS navigation in India, at considerably lower costs as compared to other countries. With the launch of Google maps, the competition in this space is increasing at a rapid pace.

How Does It Work?

GPS tracking is a simple connection of three different components, hardware, software and a main server with detailed maps. In the current scenario, the hardware is a GPS-GSM integrated device, which is installed in the vehicle and transmits the position of the vehicle from the satellite to the base station. The software application picks up the latitude/longitude data, which is finally sent to the web server where the position is displayed on the map. Therefore, the company needs to have a predefined-map on their server, which traces the actual position.

Bangalore-based EI Labs, which makes GPS devices for Toyota Kirloskar and Patel Roadways, has recently launched a product, which is basically a GPS device, combined with a Geographical Information System (maps) and an employee database. With EDB-GIS software, the fleet manager can refer to the city map online and assign a cab for the employees. Every 4-5 minutes, the device uploads the location as well as the time data to the server, where it is recorded. It also reports on the distance run per day. Since it runs independent of the odometer, it is tamper-proof. Google Earth plays a major role in their solution.

An Enterprise-wide Solution

Ashok Leyland recently launched their indigenous GPS tracking system ‘Alert’ in joint collaboration with Siemens VDO. Sources at Ashok Leyland say that the solution has been long overdue and can be used at the enterprise as well as end user level.

According to Amit Prasad, CEO, SatNav Technologies, “The minimum investment for a large enterprise to implement the solution with a big fleet service would be not less than Rs.1 crore. But it eventually depends on the number of carriers.” SatNav is one of the company’s emerging GPS products which soon will be launched for both enterprise and end users and uses either Windows based phone, Pocket Pcs, or Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs). A range of enterprise products will soon be launched in April 2008.

Many Logistics services have been using GPS tracking systems to know the time taken between destinations, fuels stops, running time etc. Patel roadways is one of the many major Indian companies who have a GPS tracking system, part of every carrier. They were not available for comment but it seems that its really working out for them as many of their carriers are now on schedule and they hardly face an issue tracking consignments and trucks, as their solution also has a voice support that can be used to contact the driver at any time.

Significance 2008

2008 will see many companies opting for a GPS solution. Whether big or small, companies need to keep the safety of their employees in mind if they have a fleet service in place or a cab - drop and pickup service.

MERU’s latest GPS enabled metered radio taxi service, managed by V-Link, is already making waves in Mumbai. These cabs use a ’lost and found’ tracking system, hence lost items can be traced back to the particular cab. V-Link plans to launch more services in cities across India.

Gartner highlighted in 2007 that GPS would be one of the fastest emerging technology trends. Thus, so far it feels that 2008 will be the year where GPS makes it big, but whether Gartner’s predictions come true, only time will tell.