Logistics technology: Descartes acquires GeoMicro Inc.

Logistics technology provider Descartes recently announced it has acquired GeoMicro Inc., a provider of advanced geographic information systems (GIS) and commercial
turn-by-turn navigation.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Descartes said that GeoMicro’s GIS platform enables daily routing, navigation, field service, and spatial data business intelligence services, and also supports various advanced GIS services, including high performance map display, geo-location, commercial vehicle route calculation, spatial data querying, and turn-by-turn navigation suitable for commercial and hazardous material route use. The company added that GeoMicro’s solutions help customers to precisely locate assets and resources in motion, reduce the cost and time of deliveries, and increase driver safety and compliance.

“Descartes’ strategy is focused on growing and operating the most complete and interoperable global Logistics Technology Platform,” a company spokesperson told LM. “Descartes’ Logistics Technology Platform uniquely combines the Global Logistics Network, a wide range of modular and interoperable logistics applications and the largest community of logistics intensive companies in the world.”

And the spokesperson added that the acquisition of GeoMicro advances Descartes’ strategic objective to strengthen its presence and leadership position by:
-expanding Descartes’ network capabilities to offer address verification and tracking as a cloud-based service;
-enhancing Descartes’ applications with advanced Geographic Information Systems (GIS) capabilities required for the management of commercial transportation; and
-providing the potential to grow the community drastically in the future as the technology scales to address future opportunities such as crowd-sourced location traffic and road network data services.

By adding GeoMicro’s technology and services to Descartes’ Logistics Technology Platform, the spokesperson said Descartes’ customers can access the advanced geographical information processing that is critical to efficient logistics operations.

“Logistics-intensive businesses face complicated challenges that require GIS functions to be deeply embedded within the location-based services their preferred technology partners provide,” said Arthur Mesher, Descartes’ Chairman and CEO, in a statement. “Working closely with customers, we recognized the need to extend our cloud-based Logistics Technology Platform’s GIS capabilities to provide solutions that not only meet today’s geographic information needs, but also scale to address future technology opportunities such as crowd-sourced location traffic and road network services.”