On the 1st of January 2024, we celebrated our 5-year anniversary as IQGeo. While it’s certainly an achievement for any technology company to survive and thrive for half a decade, these five years represent only one chapter in a much longer and richer history of our geospatial software technology. This anniversary is an opportunity to look back at our progress, and the impact our growing team is having on some of the biggest challenges facing the world today.
Where it started, the story of Ubisense
In 2018, we were part of Ubisense, a company at a crossroads. Ubisense had two primary product lines focused on geospatial technology. The first was an RTLS sensor and tag-based solution used in the manufacturing industry to track assembly units within factory environments. The second was a fledgling geospatial software business sold to telecom and utilities to capture and manage their physical network assets. While both product lines had proven their potential, they had little in common when it came to technology or the industries we targeted. Internally, the two business lines were competing for resources, talent, and funding.
Our senior management team considered several options for the organization's long-term future and made the bold decision to split the business so both divisions could achieve their full potential. On the 1st of January 2019, we sold the RTLS business along with the Ubisense brand, and the myWorld geospatial software technology was reborn as IQGeo. As anyone who has been through structural business change such as this can tell you, it’s tense, frenetic, and exciting. The goal was to give both sides of the business the best opportunity for success in their own markets, and I’m pleased to say that the once competing business lines have gone on to achieve independent success as Ubisense and IQGeo.
The beginning of IQGeo
It all started with a small but dedicated team of 60 people with big ambitions, focused on the promise to deliver geospatial mobile software to help telecom and utility companies meet new digital transformation objectives across the world. Over the last five years, we reshaped and focused the organization and radically expanded the depth and breadth of our software portfolio. We have gone from an unknown challenger brand in the telecom and fiber market to one of the leaders in this space and we are replicating this success in the electric utility industry.
Like many rapidly growing tech companies, we’ve achieved our trajectory through organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Since 2019 our customer base has grown tenfold. The acquisition of OSPInsight in 2020 and Comsof in 2022 has added to our market share, the strength of our lifecycle solutions, and most importantly, an amazing talent pool of software and industry experts.
News: IQGeo expands APAC operations with new Kuala Lumpur team and office >>>
Sharing the IQGeo vision
The industry events we attend and host highlight the progress we’ve made in helping our telecom and utility customers with the enormous challenge of reimagining the design, construction, maintenance, and management of their fiber networks and electric grids. Our popular Meetup events bring together IQGeo’s ecosystem from across the telecom and utility industries to network with experts, share best practices, and learn from IQGeo champions in Cambridge, Tokyo, and Denver. We recently announced our 2024 Meetup dates, and you can read more about this on our news page.
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News: IQGeo's popular Meetup events return in 2024 >>>
New solutions and software editions
In 2023, we announced our Integrated Network and Adaptive Grid solution portfolios for broadband network and electric grid operators. We launched three new additions of our award-winning Network Manager Telecom and Network Manager Electric software, expanding our ability to support networks of virtually any size.
Unique to the industry, we can now offer operators our packaged SaaS Insight edition with the ability to seamlessly evolve to our configurable Professional and customizable Enterprise editions as their technical and business requirements grow in complexity.
With the launch of our new solutions and the expansion of the Network Manager products, we have broadened the scope of what we can offer existing and new customers. These changes provide a long-term strategy for our OSPInsight software customers and tightly integrate the Comsof Fiber automated planning and design software to provide a single, end-to-end network lifecycle management solution.
Our innovations, like the Integrated Network and Adaptive Grid solutions, are more than just software. They are bridges connecting technology to the real-world requirements of our customers. By enabling them to manage and improve their networks, we empower broadband and utility operators to connect their communities and create a more sustainable future.
The right place at the right time
As in life, success is often a function of good decisions, hard work, and luck. We have great technology, smart people, and we find ourselves in two exciting markets. Record growth in the rollout of fiber networks is driven by commercial broadband operators competing for market share and by national and local governments seeking to provide universal broadband services. In parallel, electric utilities are making major investments to modernize their grids for renewable and distributed energy generation and to meet government targets for net-zero carbon emissions. With these global megatrends set to continue for the coming decade, they provide a strong long-term investment foundation for IQGeo and our customers.
Measuring the success of IQGeo
How you measure the success of a company depends on who you are and the metrics you choose to use. As an IQGeo shareholder you can point to our consistent revenue growth, profitability, and the rise in our share price. As a technologist you might look at the evolution of our SaaS product line, the expanded depth and breadth of our product capabilities, along with the industry awards we have received for our products. As the CMO, our marketing team measures the amazing progress we’ve made in establishing the IQGeo brand, recognized as a force to be reckoned with, and our credibility among customers and partners.
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Discover more industry awards IQGeo has received over the years >>>
This said, my preferred measure of success is the value we’re providing to our customers and the contribution our software is making to the urgent challenges of global digital equity and creating the net zero carbon economy of the future. We are helping network operators realize the promise of universal broadband and electric grids that enable distributed and renewable energy generation. The software created by our team in partnership with our customers is having a positive impact on the lives of millions of people around the world.
Visit our customers stories page to see why Brightspeed, WAPA, Alncom, Bell, TEPCO, ExteNet Systems, NW Natural, Counties Energy, and many more have chosen IQGeo.
Building Better Networks
While our financial, technology, and market achievements are important, the ultimate measure of success is the positive contribution we make to changing the world. We are connecting people to the vital resources they need, empowering communities with the tools for progress, and igniting a collective spark for a more sustainable tomorrow. In short, we are helping our customers build better networks. Check out our video that explains what we mean by “better”.
Looking back over our first five years, we can be proud of what we have achieved together with our customers to deliver digital equity and fight climate change. And I can confidently speak for the IQGeo team when I say that it’s been an exciting and fulfilling experience, and we look forward to “Building Better Networks” for years to come.
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