French company acquires Boatracs

JULY 18, 2012 — Les Ulis, France, headquartered Orolia (NYSE Alternext Paris – FR0010501015 – ALORO), has acquired Boatracs Inc., which has been providing communications, tracking and monitoring services – including its Qualcomm OmniTRACS product line – to the North American marine industry for 20 years.
 
Oriola says the Boatracs acquisition is part of its strategy to move up the value chain by offering more complete business solutions to its customers operating critical infrastructure in remote or harsh environments.  These solutions consist of a hardware platform, a communications beacon which allows for wireless data transmission and reception and software which provides a web-based user interface to facilitate effective data communications between ship and shore.

“This acquisition not only expands our product offering, but also strengthens our presence in the North American fishing and workboat market segments, ” said Jean-Yves Courtois, President and CEO of Orolia. “It has the added benefit of bringing us critical size in the application software domain, human-machine interfaces and client-server architectures that are crucial for the development of M2M solutions and services for our customers operating in challenging environments.”
 
“Boatracs will benefit from Orolia’s international sales presence in the maritime sector to expand its business reach, taking advantage of our prominent brands and customer relationships all over the world,” said Irwin Rodrigues, CEO of Boatracs Inc.  “As part of Orolia, we will have additional resources to accelerate our market leader position in commercial maritime communications solutions through new product offerings and global coverage and be at the forefront of meeting the evolving needs of the industry.”