While we have been hard at work releasing new Human Mobility Data Packages for Retail and Real Estate in our DaaS (Data as a Service) product line we have been secretly working on a massive new product that is going to change how companies globally think about location data.
We have been waiting for this for almost a full year, and are today really proud and excited to announce that we are adding a powerful PaaS (Platform as a Service) feature to our existing DaaS product line. Meet Turbine!
Our thesis is simple, most location data will never be available in a commercial setting for reasons like competitiveness, privacy, or simply because it is not the primary focus. At Unacast we have therefore from the very start planned a PaaS version of our technology - where all our capabilities are externalized for our clients to use on their own data without releasing that data into a commercial environment.
That product is now launched - and it's called Turbine!
Going (back) to Europe
To mark the launch, Northern European telco Telia has signed with Unacast to power all their location tech and insights across all of Telia’s markets. It's a monumental deal for US-based Unacast in that it also marks our entry into European market. With our Norwegian origin and heritage this is of course also exciting on a more personal level.
When we raised $17.5m last year we announced that we would enter Europe and invest heavily in R&D - this partnership is proof of both.
The partnership with Telia also signals the future of real-world insights, as we empower the release of immense new volumes of location data, in a fast and accurate way with all data being anonymized, aggregated, and scrambled every 24 hours. Internally we say we have built “AWS for location data” in that we have through Turbine made available the tools and infrastructure needed for everyone to unleash the power in their own data.
ComputerWeekly covered the launch, and you can read what Telia is planning to use Turbine for here
What is Turbine?
Unacast is the global platform for high-quality location insights. Through our network of location data partners, Unacast’s advanced filtering and clustering algorithms ensure all data that ends up in our proprietary Real World Graph© is a trustworthy visit, dwell, or journey - meaning that we understand both the device and the context. This data is coupled with other signals to provide a transparent full picture of behavior in the real world while maintaining and respecting user privacy.
With the launch of Turbine, and externalizing our proprietary technology, Unacast can now empower all other companies across the world to finally extract value from their dormant location data, without mixing it with other sources. We enable them to benefit from our cutting edge location data processing and technology, resulting in privacy-friendly products fully contained within the boundaries of that company to solve specific business needs.
Through our deep relationship with Google, Unacast has optimized Google Cloud Platform to perfectly fit this use case - enabling agile, fast, transparent, and shared processes in the cloud.
How will Telia use Turbine?
”This partnership is innovation at its finest, with Telia’s data, industrial knowledge, and market presence being married with the cutting-edge technology from Unacast, propelling us both forward,” comments Kristofer Ågren, Head of Data Insights, Division X at Telia Company.
Telia will use Unacast’s newly launched Turbine engine for all of its location data products across the Nordics and Baltics, enabling them to transform raw location data into high-quality, privacy-friendly location insights. Through this, Unacast will power Telia’s deeper understanding of crowd movement which aids critical improvements being made to sectors including urban development, public transport, events, tourism, and retail. The partnership is already fully operational with Telia set to release a suite of data insights products, built on top of Unacast’s Turbine engine, in the coming months and years.
Examples of products from Telia based on location insights:
JOURNEY ANALYSIS: Understanding where and how people travel to and from each day lets transport operators and urban planners make better-informed decisions.
- Identify new public transportation routes to fulfill unmet needs
- Reduce commute and connection times
- Reduce operating costs by matching services and staffing to real needs
FOOTFALL ANALYSIS: Understanding how many people pass by a given location at a given time helps urban planners to better understand and meet peoples’ needs:
- Understand where to situate public facilities such as car parking, food kiosks, cycle stands
- Identify commuter congestion at transit points and take steps to alleviate and improve the commuting experience
- Understand crowd flow at large-scale events and where to position food stalls, security and toilets
“At Telia, we strongly believe that anonymous data and insights will be one of the core pillars of our total product offering. One example is our newly launched Telia City Vitality Insights - a dashboard service filled with data from a city’s movement patterns empowering decision-makers in the city to plan and act in a smarter and more sustainable way. Last year, when Telia Company invested in Unacast, a joint project started to evaluate if Unacast would be a good fit for us as a partner as well.”, adds Kristofer Ågren, Head of Data Insights, Division X at Telia Company, and continues, “In addition to their advanced technology, we chose Unacast for their speed, agility, partnership mentality with co-location of staff, and our alignment of core values: sustainability, transparency, and equality.”
Where do we go from here?
First of all we need to thank the dedicated and skilled Unacast team for building Turbine in parallel with our other initiatives while delivering the highest quality of output - validated by Telia signing up immediately after launch. A big thank you to you all - you are awesome!
Our job now is to take the newly launched Turbine PaaS product out into the world and onboard more partners like Telia, while we continue to deliver the best location insights to Retail, Real Estate and City Planning from our DaaS product line.
The real world needs a Real World Graph® - and we are now one step closer to it.
