TomTom Africa sheds light on the latest developments into location based services within business and government environments at annual conference
Midrand, South Africa 21 April, 2015 – TomTom Africa explores the concept of connected services (including the connected car) and realtime database updates at this year’s Developer Day and User Conference at the Bytes Conference Centre in Midrand on 21 – 22 April 2015. The free two day event will feature lectures and case-studies into the latest trends and best practices for navigation and location based services.
Etienne Louw, General Manager for TomTom Africa, a leading provider of digital navigation licensing and location based services (LBS) says, “The Developer Day and User Conference plans to showcase some of the company’s leading mapping and location based services solutions. The theme for this year’s conference is ‘Real and Connected’ where we’ll be sharing findings on connected services plus look at real time database updates amongst other things.
TomTom Africa and TomTom South Africa forms part of the Expansion Markets business sector of TomTom. This is a very exciting sector where we are often challenged by management to think out of the box and try new business models, explore new business partner relationships etc. In line with this we have been the forerunners in creating reseller agreements with companies such as deCarta and Micello to expand our technology stack and enrich our digital mapping solution offerings to the market.
This is our third hackathon and this year the focus is on exploring the capabilities of both the TomTom Bridge (ruggedised Android tablet with extendible TomTom navigation on board in the form of the TomTom Navkit SDK) as well as the various deCarta options to allow developers an opportunity to create something exciting and win a price to the value of R20 000. A winner of a previous hackathon, Infotech, will be demonstrating some of the integration they have done between the two platforms. Typical target areas for these platforms include the Rent Me (car/truck rental companies), Drive Me (truck companies), Bring Me (taxi companies) and Deliver Me (leasing/logistics companies) and system integrators interested into offering seamless backend integration into financial/CRM/ERP etc. systems. This is our largest and most exciting hackathon yet and I am very curious/excited to see what the delegates will come up with and who will be winning the prize”.
The User Conference will take an in-depth look at what drives business’ logistics and transport needs and how application development can cater to these requirements.
Keynote speakers from TomTom and leading technology partner deCarta will also explore a range of topics such as:
- How LBS technology can be used to improve business applications
- Strategic insights into fleet management from a global and African perspective
- Interpretation of traffic information and its applications from a business perspective
- Effective road system management (tolling etc.)
- The ‘connected car’ demystified
- WhereIsMyTransport – a user-friendly app to assist people in locating reliable public transport
- Traffic Index – a statistical overview of local and global congestion trends.
Other speakers will include representatives from IBM Bluemix and Infotech providing significant insights into fleet management technology and types of business strategy. Dr Johann Andersen, from the University of Stellenbosch, will explain how traffic data is used in a number of civil studies and SANRAL’s Manager for Toll and Traffic division, Alex van Niekerk, will give an overview into the world of SANRAL and how they utilize the traffic info supplied by TomTom.
The Bytes Conference Centre is conveniently located along the N1 just off the New Road off-ramp in Midrand.
