Yesterday HERE, a leader in navigation, mapping and location experiences, announced plans to acquire Medio Systems Inc., a Seattle-based company that is a pioneer in the emerging field of real-time predictive analytics.
Building on Medio’s ‘smart data’ asset enables HERE to create contextual maps and location services that change according to the situation to provide highly personalized and predictive experiences for people and businesses. That could mean delivering individual restaurant recommendations to someone ready for lunch, giving drivers routes that match their driving style based on real-time conditions or helping businesses personalize their customer offerings.
“We are entering the age of what I call cognitive mapping, in which maps will understand their environment and anticipate people’s intent in order to deliver interactive and smart location experiences,” said Michael Halbherr, CEO of HERE. “We plan to extend Medio’s talent and technology that analyzes millions of connected devices and billions of interactions on the go to strengthen our ability to deliver highly personalized maps and location services for whatever people face throughout their day.”
Predictive analytics are an essential component of the HERE mission to provide the right map and services at the right moment across screens and operating systems. By acquiring Medio, HERE aims to achieve that mission by taking maps far beyond where they are today.
“We share the vision of HERE to deliver highly personalized and contextual maps and services,” said Medio founder and CTO, Brian Lent and CEO Robert Lilleness. “Since our start nearly 10 years ago, Medio has led innovation in the analytics business. Companies from across industries already trust Medio to analyze people on the go to help them deliver more personalized services to their customers. With HERE we are poised to deliver on an expanded vision that puts our team squarely at the intersection of predictive analytics and location intelligence, while also reaching more companies.”
In order to understand what a person might want and need in a given moment Medio, which has nearly 60 employees, mines vast amounts of real-time activity data now available from the proliferation of sensors and connected devices into actionable intelligence. Its cloud-based predictive analytics engine leads a fundamental shift in how big data is gathered and processed so that it becomes a valuable source of intelligence to help companies make better, automated business actions.
The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close by the end of July 2014. The terms of the transaction are confidential.
Following the acquisition, HERE intends to share Medio’s technology, as relevant, with the other two businesses of the Nokia Group, Networks and Technologies, to further capitalize on the acquisition.
“We believe the 3rd Platform of computing, built on cloud, big data & analytics, mobile, and social is starting to move into its next phase”, said Crawford Del Prete, EVP Worldwide research, IDC. “This next era of computing will be highly dependent on the personalization of services and products. The combination of HERE’s at scale mapping platform and Medio’s predictive analytics is very powerful, and an important part of how technology will transform everyday experiences in the future.
HERE is a Nokia company and is a leader in navigation, mapping and location experiences. The company combine highly accurate and fresh maps with cloud technology to enable rich, real-time location experiences in a broad range of connected devices – from smartphones and tablets to wearables and vehicles.
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