Jeppesen C-Map, the press conference
It wasn’t surprising that Jeppesen Marine’s Miami press conference was meatier than Navico’s. Jep’s acquisition of C-Map had been through a many-month due diligence process and had already closed before the boat show. I came away thinking that existing C-Map customers, retail and OEM, have nothing to worry about, and that the products that evolve out of this combination are going to be interesting. For one thing, we were introduced to the new manager of the Recreational division, James Detar—to the left above, with Jeppesen Marine VP Tim Sukle and Nobeltec manager Shepard Tucker. Detar seems evolved for the task; he grew up in a Cape Cod boatyard, then went on to earn an advanced degree in cartography and work at C-Map for some 15 years, first in chart production, then business development. He even speaks fluent Italian. When asked if Jeppesen would change any of C-Map’s many existing OEM relationships, Detar said, very convincingly: “Absolutely not!”
Sukle and Tucker described the overall vision of Jeppesen Marine, which is next generation charts/data/software (not hardware), both for OEM’s and their own products. Thus Nobeltec will help advance C-Map’s plotter OS much like it’s worked backstage on Simrad’s Glass Bridge and certain Northstar products. (I later spoke with a big C-Map OEM, and he’s excited). Tucker also described how Jeppesen is applying its massive resources to a set of Web services that will include facilities for users to share data, including POI info, with each other and the world. That made me smile.
Jeppesen, by the way, has a heck of a history. It didn’t seem to be in the movie (worth watching), but we were told that founder, and early mail pilot, Elrey Jeppesen famously said, “I didn’t do this to make money; I did it to stay alive!”
