If Big Integrators are the New Drone Industry Influencers – AirMap is Moving to the Forefront

At the InterGeo conference in Germany last week, drone analysts DRONEII said that in 2019, integrators are the strongest influencers in the drone industry.  If that’s the case, then AirMap is set to maintain their position as an industry influencer with this week’s announcement that the company has acquired drone workflow platform Hangar. The move sees AirMap double down on the intention to go above and beyond airspace management solutions, and will expand Hangar’s reach to new international markets and industries.

Read more: AirMap Expanding Their Role in the Airspace: An Interview with CEO David Hose

Expanding Enterprise Services

AirMap is a leading provider of airspace intelligence and unmanned traffic management (UTM) technology.  The platform allows drone pilots to integrate operations into low-altitude airspace and serves a variety of stakeholders in UTM: including drone pilots, airports, and communities.  Hangar’s platform allows subject matter experts to fly complicated missions easily: with software that allows autonomous drone flight designed to cover every inch of an inspection site.

The acquisition of Hangar will add to AirMap’s enterprise services: AirMap plans to extend Hangar’s workflow automation, high-precision flight planning and image processing capabilities to its international ecosystem of developers and enterprises.  The company will expand AirMap’s platform of APIs and SDKs accordingly in the coming months.

Why Integration is Important

At drone conferences and events throughout the year, the question of “enterprise scale” has been a hot topic.  Until large enterprises like oil and gas, construction, insurance and others really scale drone operations beyond proof of concept to fleets of hundreds or thousands, the drone industry won’t reach the lofty heights predicted.  Enterprise companies, however, have a problem: regulations can be difficult to navigate; and drone data can be tricky to acquire, difficult to process, and problematic to access for all stakeholders in the organization.

Those problems are being improved upon.  Airspace intelligence and UTM platforms are making it easier for pilots to navigate regulatory issues and ensure that they are flying legally.  As drones become more automated and easier to use through platforms like Hangar’s, the data becomes more consistent and enterprise subject matter experts can utilize drones as a tool as a matter of course.

AirMap CEO David Hose says that the acquisition is a next step in enabling enterprise operations.  “We have pretty good visibility into the complete airspace,” says Hose, “which has made it much easier for pilots to operate.  There’s lots more to do there and we’re going to continue to focus on that.”

“This acquisition is hopefully another way of allowing people to fly more. We’re removing the friction from knowing where to fly, and now we’re removing the friction from operations so that the industry can grow faster.”

Hose says that making complex operations easier allows enterprise to focus more on the real value: data.  With automated and consistent data capture, enterprise can concentrate on ROI, says Hose.  “We can easily capture data now, we can do image recognition and processing – now customers can focus on data analysis leading to decision and action.”

“For AirMap, we’re making this move because we think this is what the market needs now,” says Hose.  “We’re making a bet on what we believe is the next wave – integrating drones into the fabric of the enterprise.”