MapAnything, location of things software company, recently introduced a suite of APIs for access to its routing and optimization engines. The Routing Engine API provides geospatial insights for location, routes, schedules and more. The Travel Cost Matrix API returns travel time estimates based on historical data. MapAnything has built its services with an eye bent towards business to business sectors, especially for businesses that rely on routing and scheduling services.
"Until now, the legacy technology and API services used by transportation, logistics and field service applications was designed for on-premise hardware before the age of cloud computing," John Steward, MapAnything CEO, commented in a press release. "By offering our advanced Routing and Optimization Engine, and open access to the engine with our new API service, we're going to revolutionize routing and scheduling for those industries. We're taking a fresh approach to solving an age-old problem, leveraging a decade of experience building location-based applications for the enterprise."
MapAnything suggests that many modern location and routing services are being built for use in autonomous vehicles and consumer apps. MapAnything has built its platform from the ground up specifically targeting fleet-based businesses. The company believes this will give it a strategic advantage to a huge industry of customers. ServiceTitan, an early MapAnything API adopter and software provider to home service companies, credits MapAnything's platforms for simplified and quicker execution of its Smart Dispatch offering.
The Routing Engine API includes four parameters (locations, orders, vehicles, constraints). Locations include physical places actually routed (latitude/longitude pairs). Orders include service at a specific location. Vehicles include the characteristics of a routed vehicle. Constraints include the rules that determine a routing problem.
The Cost Matrix API analyzes a series of locations and provides travel distance and time between each location. The API returns travel time estimates. Included in the analysis are historical data based on years of traffic data. The returns also account for time of day.