A Calgary wireless data service company has big plans in the oil and gas patch after raising nearly $17 million from the sale of 1.5 million in common shares.
Wireless Matrix Corporation, which specializes in monitoring, capturing and retrieving industrial data from remote locations, is set to expand its IP Anywhere product network around the globe.
The service allows remote data devices — like those found on oil and gas wells, compressor stations, pipelines, fluid storage tanks, and mobile rail cars and truck trailers — to be IP-enabled, allowing the information they store to be viewed from the customer’s desktop computer in a user-friendly format.
“The market has responded very well. It’s the way of the future in terms of wireless communications,” said company CFO Mark Weder.
Instead of an employee physically heading out into the field to report measurements from various oil or gas operations, the readings can be done from the company’s office with the use of wireless or land-based technology, he adds. With the oil and gas sector, “their asset base is very geographically dispersed and, typically, there’s a high cost associated with recovering that data,” says Weder.
“But if you can IP-enable that and bring it back to a standard desktop browser, then it frees up the data for the entire enterprise. It’s a new way of doing things.”
The company, which changed its name earlier this year from Interprovincial Satellite Services Ltd., also plans to expand into the utility, environment and transportation sectors.
Wireless Matrix also has its sights set on Internet-enabling more than 100 million fax machines and 300 million other non-PC electronic data devices worldwide.