News | November 4, 2005

Trimble Navigator Sample Application Software Provides Mobile Workers With Location-Based Services

Sunnyvale, CA — Trimble and Connected Innovation LLC have worked together to develop Trimble® Navigator Sample Application software that provides mobile workers with in-field access to the real-time maps and driving directions capabilities of the Microsoft MapPoint Web Service. The Trimble Navigator Sample Application software will be offered with Trimble's rugged handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) devices that run Microsoft Windows Mobile software for Pocket PCs.

Purchased separately, the Microsoft MapPoint Web Service is a programmable Web service hosted by Microsoft that provides customers and partners with a familiar development platform for more easily creating mapping and location-aware applications and services to help them visualize business processes and data.

The Trimble Navigator Sample Application software uses the wireless LAN and GPS capabilities of the recently introduced GeoExplorer® 2005 series handhelds and Trimble Recon® GPS systems, and also demonstrates the connectivity to back-office services such as MapPoint Web Service. This functionality demonstrates how Trimble products are ideally suited for mobile enterprise applications.

Organizations that can benefit from this service include those whose personnel navigate to multiple customer locations, facilities or job sites in a vehicle during a typical day and those whose plans often change throughout the day. Specific examples include data collection and field service personnel in the utilities and telecommunications industries.

"The Trimble Navigator Sample Application software was developed jointly by Trimble and Connected Innovation," said Alan Townsend, vice president of Trimble Field Solutions. "This application can be fully customized and extended to meet the specific fleet and asset management needs of the mobile enterprise organization. It also fully complements Trimble's hardware products for the mobile worker to provide a total mobile enterprise solution."

"There is a strong demand among mobile enterprise and fleet organizations to integrate mapping and location intelligence throughout their business processes to help them make more-informed decisions, lower operational costs and be more efficient," said Tom Bailey, director of sales, marketing, and business development of for the MapPoint Business Unit at Microsoft Corp. "The Trimble Navigator Sample Application is an example of how our industry partners are leveraging the MapPoint Web Service to easily create mapping and location-aware applications and services for their customers."

The Trimble Navigator Sample Application software, which ships with a 45 day trial of the Microsoft MapPoint Web service, is available through Trimble's Mapping and GIS dealer and business partner network in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Australia and most of Western Europe.

SOURCE: Trimble