InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

December 4, 2000

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Global Positioning System Monitors Fleet Health

Evertrac package lets CA customers manage vehicles as if they were servers

By Bob Wallace

More on GPS:

EETimes: Mercedes-Benz blazes electronics trail (11/20/00) EETimes: Lucent spinout SyChip shrinks GPS module (11/6/00) EETimes: ARM licenses Parthus GPS chip for mobile phones (9/11/00)

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truck full of refrigerated seafood breaks down. It takes hours before the fleet operator hears about it, and thousands of dollars of lobsters don't arrive on time. The botched delivery costs a trucking company one of its best customers.

With new hardware, software, and services available this week from Evertrac Inc., this scenario and others like it could be minimized or avoided altogether. Evertrac's Admiral Fleet Management System is designed to help manage fleets of cars, trucks, or cruise ships as though they were Windows NT servers, switches, or routers. Evertrac is a joint venture of Computer Associates and United Microelectronics Inc., a maker of global positioning system chips.

Black boxes containing GPS chips installed in the fleet log problems, such as vehicle breakdowns, and send alerts over a wireless link to a CA Unicenter management system. The chips convey locations so replacements can be dispatched if necessary. Unicenter can also pass the information to a CA customer-relationship management application so customer-service representatives can alert clients.

The system helps companies proactively manage fleets. Parameters can be set to trigger maintenance notices, says Evertrac CEO Imran Anwar. For example, the system can generate alerts before a truck's oil pressure reaches a dangerous level.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. in Miami uses CA Unicenter to manage servers on its ships and is considering using the Evertrac software. "We see great opportunity to manage our 18 luxury-liner fleet, as that would extend the value of the management platform and proactively address the ships' health and monitor their location," CIO Thomas Murphy says.

Elliott Hamilton, senior VP at market-research firm the Strategis Group, says Evertrac's system is the most complete fleet-management package available. Of note is the software's multipurpose capability and ease of use, something companies "have been long looking for," Hamilton says.

Pricing for the package, available from both Evertrac and CA, depends on configuration.

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