DroneDeploy’s Massive Growth is Driving Massive Development

Leading drone data platform DroneDeploy has seen exponential growth this year.  That growth – and the massive body of data that has resulted – is driving the development of the DroneDeploy platform.

Company co-founder Jono Millin says that in 2017 the company has doubled in size.  While their internal growth is impressive, “The most exciting thing to talk about is what’s been changing with our customers,” says Millin.  In the last year DroneDeploy has seen a dramatic increase in enterprise customers, and deployments have gotten far more sophisticated.  These factors have driven changes in the DroneDeploy product, says Millin.  And the company doesn’t have to guess at what customers want.

In just this year, the company has mapped more than 25 million acres, representing an area larger than the country of Iceland.  They’ve processed 40 million images in 2017, create thousands of maps every day, and have processed 750k measurements on the platform so far this year.  It’s a vast quantity of data, growing daily, and the platform has proven its ability to scale.

DroneDeploy’s goal is to offer a best of breed, enterprise solution.  With some major new releases, new APIs, the fast growth of their App Market and private app customization capabilities, they are quickly expanding their market offering.

James Pipe, DroneDeploy’s Product Manager, says that their customer base provides the best data for the product roadmap.  “We can take a look at the type of use cases and develop for that,” says Pipe. This week the company is announcing major new features: “Great big new releases that are going to make your lives easier,” says Pipe.

New features include a 3D flight mode, changes to defaults that allow users to customize their preferences, an offline user interface, and a new admin panel for enterprises.  They’re providing more and better real-time data, and increasing the usefulness of the data by enhancing the way data can be shared and used with other products.

The DroneDeploy platform includes the largest App Market in the industry, an increasing number of APIs to allow more points of integration, and a Private App option, which allows enterprise customers to customize a solution.  Private apps allow for features like custom flight settings, FAA checklist, customer reporting and workflow automation.

Ian Smith, Head of Business Development for DroneDeploy’s App Market, says that DroneDeploy is fostering an ecosystem of innovation.  They currently offer the world’s largest collection of apps – over 60, offering solutions for 9 industry verticals.  Over 1 million app runs demonstrate the market’s adoption, as does the over 100,000 app installs.  “People are finding these apps,” says Smith, “and using them to solve problems.”

 

“More apps, more value, new APIs – we’re opening up our platform for more integration points for an even better user experience,” says Smith.  “We’re opening the platform to the enterprise.”