DigiCore Technology continued with its restructuring in support of DigiCore’s strategic direction and evolving market requirements. Development and project resources expanded in line with new opportunities and capacity is being created to ensure DigiCore Technology can deliver innovative solutions and capitalise on new technology and market opportunities.
Staying ahead of the competition, the division developed a new low-cost Ctrack hardware platform specifically addressing the needs of the insurance industry to manage vehicle and driverrelated risks. Despite the unit’s low cost, it uses the latest GSM and GPRS technologies and has capacity for significant feature growth, allowing us to accommodate functional and clientspecific enhancements without hardware changes. We are investigating manufacturing this line in China. This unit was launched in South Africa in October 2008 as Ctrack InsureTM.
New Ctrack mapping was released for a number of regions, including South Africa, and our mapping department now maintains more than 50 different map sets for our customers.
New versions of Ctrack5 and the Ctrack ConnectTM internet client were released to support new market requirements.
During the previous period, DigiCore Technology announced the development of a CANBus interface for our top-of-the-line Ctrack Solo. This interface allows Ctrack to connect directly to a commercial vehicle’s engine management computer and report accurate fuel consumption, speed and revolutions per minute, among others. This interface is now standard on Ctrack Solo.
For Ctrack customers in Africa and Asia where GSM communication is only available in regional pockets, Ctrack Solo MultiTM is now available. This includes a cost-effective Inmarsat transceiver, allowing the vehicle to communicate to its base via communication satellites when GSM is not available.
DigiCore Technology is proud to have introduced the latest generation Ctrack6 base station and server software at the annual European Distributor Conference in September 2008.
Ctrack6 will replace Ctrack5 in 2009, when installation will start at selected customers. Apart from a new architecture and new software technology, Ctrack6 integrates many of Ctrack5’s modules and supports all current Ctrack onboard units. Ctrack6 has been in use at selected customers such as Royal Mail in the UK for more than 12 months, and we expect a smooth and low-risk introduction of this technology to customers during 2009.
As part of the Ctrack6 suite of products, DigiCore Technology has released a zero-footprint web service. Already installed at a major customer, Ctrack OnlineTM has been further enhanced and will be rolled out in 2009 as part of the Gateway services, allowing customers to access their vehicles’ information from any internet PC or cellphone with full mapping.
DigiCore Technology’s Project Division focuses on major customers worldwide (typically those with more than 5 000 vehicles such as South Africa’s police services and the UK’s Royal Mail) that have complex environments and require an integrated deployment approach and customisation to effectively embed Ctrack in their organisations.
DigiCore’s Communication Gateway in Centurion remains a core part of the group’s business strategy and currently hosts more than 80 000 vehicles with more than 30 000 customers receiving their vehicles’ information in real time from this facility. The Gateway, or Hub, currently receives and forwards over 4,6 million messages per day and stores close to 5,6 million GPS positions/vehicle information records daily.
The Gateway has been upgraded as part of the move to DigiCore’s new premises, which has allowed us to implement the latest generation server hardware and greatly increase our operational capacity.
The DigiCore Product Support division (DPS) increased its personnel to support growing distributor numbers in 36 countries and nine languages, and moved to larger premises in October 2008. An electronic support system has been implemented, which allows distributors to log questions, problem reports and enhancement requests, while viewing the status of their logged items over the internet with a full history trail.
DigiCore Technology will release a number of innovative features in 2009, including one that will further reduce communication cost while increasing the amount of usableinformation reported by Ctrack.