March/April 2005

To encourage more tracking systems users to adopt MapPoint to display vehicle positions on screen maps, Microsoft has launched a new version called Fleet Edition 2004. This removes the previous requirement for the operating company to take out a separate licence for each vehicle being tracked. One licence now covers the whole fleet.

The company points out that the software cannot be used on this basis for real-time vehicle guidance, or to calculate routes on the basis of more than one vehicle position. Nor can it be run from a server and used by multiple vehicle despatchers.

However, the new 2004 edition does introduce some appealing new features for tracking systems suppliers, including the ability to generate static HTML files of maps for delivery over the Web, as well as dynamic maps - which are produced by a feature called the Digital Dashboard.