MapAnything Launches Distance Matrix API

MapAnything today announced that it will launch several APIs that provide businesses access to its Routing and Optimization engine and other components of its Location-of-Things platform. The first of these, which is immediately available as a REST API, is a distance matrix that calculates the shortest path and true travel time for a combination of locations and destinations.

“The distance matrix…is the foundation to any scheduling or route optimization problem,” says John Stewart, cofounder and CEO of MapAnything. “I have, [for example], 300 work orders that need to be serviced or 300 [[deployments] that need to be done; what is every possible calculation of time and distance between all of them?”

The distance matrix API aims to enhance any enterprise application that requires Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) or Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) calculations with the goal of helping companies improve customer service while simultaneously streamlining sales and services costs. It features nine distinct traffic windows.

“Most people when they do [a distance matrix], it’s a graph, X and Y, to solve the problem, though you need three-dimensional space, you need the Z…time. We take the world’s traffic and we’ve analyzed it and we’ve broken it up into nine distinct traffic windows,” Stewart says. “We don’t just solve the matrix; we solve it as a cube, [and] we solve it for all nine traffic windows, not just one, which gives us a far more accurate answer.”

Going forward, MapAnything will launch APIs for routing and scheduling, enrichment (gathering historic GPS position, traffic, and other elements), live GPS position, point-in-polygon and geofencing (for real-time data feeds), and capacity planning (accurately sizing field sales or field services teams).

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