Telematics through a new lens: Highlights from the Wialon community reunion in Dubai

8 November, 2024

Elizaveta Guliaeva

The Wialon community reunion in Dubai turned out to be an unforgettable experience for all who attended. It featured intense networking, insightful speeches, awards for top partners, leading hardware manufacturers, and the IoT project of the year competition winners, plus … a giveaway of stylish new glasses. Here’s a recap of everything, in order.

Gathering in one place

The Wialon community reunion is a traditional event that brings together Wialon partners from around the world for a single day in one location. On October 13, we welcomed participants to this event in Dubai, just one day before GITEX GLOBAL began.

This time, more than 200 Wialon partners from 50 countries — including the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Morocco, India, and Kazakhstan — gathered to exchange knowledge and reflect on a year of achievements with Wialon.

The reunion serves as a space for building new collaborations and gaining valuable market insights, making it a highly anticipated professional event for many.

“How’s the view now?”

That was the question Aliaksandr Kuushynau, Head of Wialon, posed to the audience in his opening speech.

Just moments before, attendees had found special Wialon glasses under their chairs and put them on — glasses that symbolized a new lens on the fleet management industry. This 'new lens' can be applied to every business aspect: emerging risks, the services we offer, and even the way we present them. Take Aliaksandr’s speech, for example. He opened it with an AI-generated telematics-related rap music video. It was memorable, to say the least!

Branded glasses with a new perspective

So, what are these risks the speaker touched on? Many telematics service providers are concerned that the ease of purchasing and self-installing GPS trackers, along with the rise of OEM telematics systems, could threaten their role. However, Aliaksandr encouraged the audience to view these challenges as opportunities to broaden their service offerings and redefine their roles — not just as equipment suppliers, but as strategic partners for fleet owners.

The reality is that a GPS tracker is only the first step in fleet digitalization, and service providers, with their vast expertise, can deliver solutions that minimize costs and automate operations. As of now, OEM systems alone can’t fully meet fleet owners’ needs, as they require comprehensive solutions for vehicle and driver management, along with data-driven insights. So, there’s still so much more to offer.

This speech fueled further discussion on these and other challenges faced by Wialon partners during the roundtable. Participants brainstormed current barriers, developed strategies to overcome them, and identified new technologies to support their journeys. Both we and our partners have taken the outcomes of this discussion on board.

Intense discussion during the roundtable

Wialon growth and new features release

The reunion provided a great opportunity for the Wialon team to share key achievements and reveal the new benefits Wialon can bring to its partners.

Anna Anistratova, Head of Partner Success Team, highlighted that Wialon reached a remarkable milestone this year: 4,000,000 vehicles connected to the platform — a testament to the hard work of Wialon partners.

She noted that while Wialon continues to experience steady growth across all regions, the most rapid increase in new vehicle connections has been in the Middle East, Africa, and North America, each seeing a 14% rise over the past year.

To honor the outstanding results of those partners who have contributed most to Wialon’s growth and elevate our offerings to them, Wialon introduced a new partner status system. Partners with Gold and Silver statuses have already started to receive extra services and priority in request processing.

First partners with new statuses got their recognition

In May, we published a Wialon development roadmap to keep our partners informed about upcoming features in advance. Aliaksandra Hancharova, Head of Product, announced that by October, most of these improvements had already been implemented, including the new task management tool and hardware health check feature. Additionally, Wialon enhanced its video telematics tool, making it a user-friendly solution that effectively meets our users’ diverse needs.

Aliaksandra also highlighted that maintaining system reliability remains a top priority for her team. Wialon continues to guarantee over 99.5% uptime as specified in our SLA, with actual uptime consistently exceeding this benchmark and even reaching up to 100%. We’ve also introduced a new status.wialon.com tool, providing a better way to stay informed about the operational status of Wialon services.

Celebrating the achievements together

At the reunion, we revealed the results of our traditional rankings, honoring the top Wialon partners and leading hardware manufacturers. On top of that, we also announced the companies whose projects received the highest scores in the IoT project of the year competition. During dedicated awards ceremonies, all winners received diplomas and prizes. Congratulations to all!

Three awards ceremonies were held in Dubai

In case you missed these rankings and competition results on the blog, here’s a quick overview with links to lists of winners.

Wialon Top Partners 2024

Wialon Top Partners highlights the service providers that connected the biggest number of vehicles to our platform over the past 12 months. This ranking includes the top ten companies from each of the seven regions.

GPS Hardware Manufacturers Top 10 2024

GPS Hardware Manufacturers Top 10 is a ranking designed to recognize the companies whose devices were most frequently connected to our platform over the past 12 months.

GPS Hardware Manufacturers Top 10: 2024 edition

IoT project of the year 2024

IoT project of the year is a global contest of fleet management and IoT projects run by Wialon. Four companies, whose projects ranked at the top in their respective categories, were honored with the prestigious Grand Prix. The next 12 projects that earned the highest scores were awarded the title of Winner of IoT project of the year 2024.

IoT project of the year 2024: Grand Prix and winners announced

Thank you all for this incredible day — see you soon!

To get a taste of the celebratory atmosphere, visit our dedicated photo albums on Facebook, showcasing the best moments from the reunion:

This year, Wialon community reunions were also held in Mexico and Brazil. Subscribe to the blog to stay updated on the next reunion.

Elizaveta Guliaeva

Elizaveta is a Content Marketer at Wialon. She keeps the Wialon community informed with the latest news and creates marketing materials that showcase the best Wialon features for various business niches.