Geotab, a supplier of connected transportation solutions, has signed an agreement to acquire BSM Technologies, which provides telematics and asset management solutions to more than 165,000 vehicles across government and private fleets in Canada and the U.S. The completion of this transaction would add to the more than 1.5 million fleet telematics subscribers utilizing Geotab globally.

Over the past 20 years, BSM has developed experience and customer relationships in the government sector, enabling municipalities and states or provinces to optimize and manage their winter road maintenance fleets.

"BSM had previously standardized on using the Geotab platform as their base and then created a competitive advantage by building new products on top of our technology," said Neil Cawse, Geotab's CEO. "An example of this is winter ops — support for data and the management of snow plows and spreaders. This technology is key for our resellers to be able to win government business."

By adopting the Geotab platform, BSM’s customers in government as well as other verticals including construction, service, and rail, will not only benefit from Geotab’s engineering expertise and focus on security, scalability, and reliability but will also gain access to solutions for enhanced visibility into vehicle performance, driver habits, accident detection, and more.

“BSM's activity in the government space coupled with Geotab’s proven success and commitment to security and scalability will work in tandem to dramatically accelerate Geotab's presence across North America, including in the electric vehicle space, which is an increasingly important emerging market," said Cawse. "We are excited about what BSM will do to strengthen our ecosystem and believe that the resultant platform enhancements will benefit our customers around the globe."

Through this transaction, BSM customers will also benefit from Geotab's partner ecosystem. BSM will contribute some of its product and services development in asset tracking, winter ops, third-party integration, and off-road equipment tracking to the Geotab Marketplace, Geotab's online solutions center for managing mobile assets and workers.

"Following the announcement of our expanded partnership with Geotab in late 2018, it became clear that BSM’s growing analytics and optimization capabilities combined with Geotab’s best in class telematics solution results in an enhanced product offering to fleet management customers," said Louis De Jong, president and CEO of BSM. "As part of the Geotab team we will be able to offer these capabilities across all of Geotab’s partner network."

In March, Geotab was awarded the world's largest single-source telematics contract in history by GSA Fleet, a division of the U.S. General Services Administration, to equip its 217,000 U.S. government vehicles with Geotab technology.

In February, Geotab announced that the cryptographic module in the company’s GO vehicle tracking device received FIPS 140-2 validation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Geotab is the first and only telematics company to achieve this standard.

Geotab will be participating in the Smart Fleets, Smart Cities: Fleet’s Growing Role In The Creation Of Smart Cities panel at the Government Fleet Expo & Conference, which takes place in New Orleans, June 17-20.