2017 in review

We gathered together the reasons why the year 2017 turned out to be really special: the rapid growth of the units number, new products, and geographic growth as well as the events. Read the article to learn more but remember that nothing happens by chance.

1. The main 2017 newsmaker was bitcoin. Analytics of global renown noticed: if the number of Wialon units grows, the digital currency value grows too. These days they give $15,262 for one bitcoin, and the number of units in our system is already more than 1,360,000. As long as investing in bitcoin is quite risky yet, investing in GPS monitoring will cause fuel savings by 10-15%.

2. In the US they officially updated the president – swearing-in ceremony took place on January 20, 2017. But we did much more – 13 Wialon Hosting updates and 1 Wialon Local update, several updates of WH mobile client and the update of WiaTag, the application-tracker that finally got the chat function in the Android version. At the end of the year, Logistics routing and addressing data improved a lot thanks to Google Maps support. All these, unlike Donald, work in a consistent and predictable way.

3. The British Prince Harry is finally engaged. In our terminology, he will stay “integrated with one solution on the market” forever (or at least for a long time). But Wialon is a polygamous system and is permanently being integrated with a new GPS and equipment. By the end of 2017, it supports almost 1,350 types of devices!

4. From time to time North Korea conducts its nuclear tests. But what we released this year is just a bomb too! We mean flespi – a new flexible telematics backend platform for seamless bidirectional communication between devices and software applications via REST API. This solution is what makes us closer to IoT that is fastly gaining popularity nowadays.

5. Elon Musk managed to build a reusable rocket. The Falcon 9 was launched in the US to deliver crucial satellites into orbit. Judging from your reaction in our forum, this year we committed even a greater revolution – presented a new fuel consumption calculation algorithm.

6. On October, 28th the first tram on hydrogen fuel started its work in China. In the USA they initiated the construction of the trial section of Hyperloop, the world transportation system. Its trains will be able to speed up to 700 mph. Gurtam is ready for these turns because in 2017 NimBus appeared. It is a new solution for public transportation monitoring! 

7. Frank Ocean’s performance at New York’s Panorama Festival gathered almost 100,000. According to our data, there were 6 GPS monitoring specialists among them while at our 5 partner conferences we welcomed nearly 500 experts from different parts of the world. On top of that, our team took part in 14 exhibitions where thousands of people visited our booths. Not bad, huh? Even more events await us in 2018, so “Let’s make some noooooise!”

8. In 2017 the world was being rocked by anti-doping scandals. We stimulated our partners’ development and helped you to achieve olympic results without any banned substances, just through our marketing support. For this year we satisfied 143 requests. Partners cases and success stories are being published on our blog and in a news section of our website – 256 posts for 12 months. If you have something to tell or need a marketing help, write to marketing@gurtam.com (in this case everything will end up well for you).

9. The American Floyd Mayweather defeated Conor McGregor during the 10th round of their boxing match. Now the invincible boxer has 50 victories in 50 meets. In 2017 the number 50 became special for us too. We gave up on the traditional Top 20 for different regions and made a common Top 50 rating. There were no surprises, the leading companies remained leaders and were able to estimate the balance of power in the world market. In 2018, the Top that we traditionally announce during our Minsk conferences is ready for new players. Connect more units and be the first!

10. La La Land, the Hollywood movie in the musical genre, got 14 Oscar nominations and 6 precious statuettes. We also got an international acknowledgment. Gurtam became #1 again in the countries of CIS and Eastern Europe according to Berg Insight. Insight report is going to be out soon, follow the news!

11. While in September the United States was rocked by Harvey and Irma, we decided to come up with our own telematics tornado in three world exhibition capitals – Los Angeles, Dubai, and Moscow. Those who still don’t know about a new format of our mega-participation in exhibitions next year (we hope there are no such people), please read the blog.

12. In 2017 the world celebrated the launch of the first artificial satellite. The event took place 60 years ago. We here celebrated our own anniversary – Gurtam turned 15. The first SaaS solution, flexible work with different types of devices, flespi – the platform that doesn’t have any analogs in the world and so much more. One way or another, we also managed to stand out from the crowd. Let’s see later (maybe in 45 years?) where it leads us.

Happy 2018! May this coming year be even better!