Partner News: New ERTICO Partner's innovative approach to accelerate LBS market

Date: 29 November 2007

Location-based solution provider ROAD Group joins ERTICO’s Industry sector Partners.

ERTICO – ITS Europe is pleased to welcome ROAD Group as a new Partner, approved by the ERTICO Supervisory Board in September. ROAD Group, whose name stems from the first two letters of the first names of its founders - Roel Pieper and Ad Bastiaansen - focuses its activities on global location based solutions. Its founders are no strangers to the ITS and LBS communities. Mr Pieper, was a former board member of Philips where he was responsible for, among others, Navteq and was an early investor in Google. Mr Bastiaansen, contributed for almost two decades to the success of ERTICO Partner TeleAtlas from its start, served on the ERTICO Supervisory Board and has over the years become a prominent figure in the ITS industry.

The vision of ROAD Group is that people prefer limitless instant access to information about their surroundings anywhere and its mission is to be the preferred global location based solution as browser to information. To achieve this mission, ROAD Group brings together several worlds with investments in interesting growth areas such as content integration, software tools and solutions via devices and services.

Started in August 2007, ROAD Group has already four companies in the group - Blue Bird (software), My Guide (devices), One Step Ahead (software tools) and weather data (data integration) – and expects revenue to total more than €150 million in 2008. Based in Zug, Switzerland, ROAD Group’s global reach extends out of Europe to the Americas and the Asia Pacific region.

It is the view of Mr Bastiaansen that the LBS market is evolving in two main directions best described as vehicle and person centric solutions. ROAD Group is looking to serve both, with an extra emphasis placed on person-centric applications. This will require a strong focus on information and entertainment, whereas vehicle-centric applications focus more on safety and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

In an exclusive interview with ERTICO, Mr Bastiaansen noted that he sees the LBS market (including navigation) in its early phase of development and refers to a quote from Winston Churchill to describe this phase: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning."

In one of its first undertakings to accelerate market growth, ROAD Group is using software developed by One Step Ahead to allow application developers to swap content, such as map databases, without additional effort. This will make application developers less dependent on one specific map supplier.

Continuous innovation is seen as a vital business mentality in ROAD Group, its companies and their way of working. Mr Bastiaansen refers to a quote from Albert Einstein to describe that mentality.

"Logic takes us from A to B, but imagination brings us everywhere."

With this business attitude in mind Mr Bastiaansen is convinced that ROAD Group’s vitality and competence in an increasingly growing and changing market will bring added-value to ERTICO and its Partners.

ERTICO CEO Arnold van Zyl notes, "ERTICO is happy to add the dynamism and foresight that ROAD Group brings to its membership."

For further information, please visit the ROAD Group website at www.roadholding.com

Mr Bastiaansen and Mr van Zyl looking forward to a strong and productive partnership.