Last week, our team was in Las Vegas for GEOTAB Connect and Manifest. Between the conversations with OEMs, fleet operations, and technology partners, one theme kept resurfacing - and it stuck with us on the flight home.

Over the last 5 to 7 years, many OEMs did the hard work: embedded connectivity, launched portals, partnered with telematics providers, and got real vehicles streaming real data. The global installed base of active construction equipment OEM telematics was about 6.8–7.8 million units in 2023–2024, with forecasts of roughly 12–13.4 million units by 2028–2029 (11–12% annual growth). For many fleets and operators, connected machines have meaningfully raised the bar. Safety programs backed by real usage data, real-time dashboards with fault codes and operational data enabled capabilities not possible before the Internet of Things (IoT) craze.

Telematics did what it promised: it made machines visible. And yet, once the dashboards are live and flowing, something else starts to happen. In conversations with OEM teams, a consistent frustration becomes clear:

• Data fragmentation prevents innovation: Machine data is everywhere, but integrating live & historical data with enterprise systems and existing workflows to make the data-driven decisions is surprisingly challenging. When data remains siloed, teams struggle to operationalize insights, and product innovation stalls.

• Data ≠ Decisions: Telematics was meant to enable data-driven decision making, yet many organizations face the opposite problem: too much data, and not enough time or people to interpret it. Without large analytics teams, insights arrive slowly, and decisions lag behind the data itself.

• Software products don’t build themselves: Telematics providers made streaming data off of the machine simple. However, turning this data into a cohesive cloud software offering through mobile & customer facing experiences requires significant investments in product design, UX, and engineering that go far beyond the traditional skillsets of embedded or firmware engineering.

A good problem: more opportunity than capacity

Platforms like Geotab and Samsara highlight how much is now possible with connected vehicles. Geotab talks openly about data as “the lifeblood of innovation,” and is partnering with over 80% of the world’s leading OEMs to harmonize signals and support new data-driven offerings. Samsara shows how open APIs and cloud-to-cloud OEM integrations let customers unify operations while keeping choice and flexibility. That is positive for OEMs in two ways:

• It proves that fleets value deeper insights, AI, and integrated workflows built on top of vehicle data.

• It creates a clear path for OEMs to extend their own services into that ecosystem, instead of having to replicate everything alone.

The main constraint is not vision; it is capacity. Most OEMs do not want to rebuild their entire stack, nor do they want to hand over the keys to someone else. They want a way to build their next layer of AI, vertical SaaS, new revenue on top of what already works.

Making the pain visible, not scary

When OEM leaders talk about data ownership or “not wanting to be held hostage,” it usually comes from a practical place, not fear. They want clarity on questions like:

• Where does my data model live, and can I evolve it on my own timeline?

• How easily can I combine telematics with warranty, service, and CRM data to create new offerings?

• If I launch an OEM‑branded maintenance or uptime service, can it plug cleanly into existing telematics partners and my devices without forcing fleets to change their tools?

These are healthy questions. They point to a desire for more collaboration, more openness, and more shared wins between OEMs, fleets, and telematics partners, not to pulling back from connectivity.

The Aerovy solution: add a unifying layer, don’t start over

The pattern that is emerging is simple: keep the good parts, add a smarter middle. Instead of ripping and replacing portals or devices, OEMs are beginning to add an ontology‑driven cloud layer that:

• Connects to existing embedded telematics, Geotab, Samsara, and even proprietary telematics units through API or edge-to-cloud.

• Normalizes all of that into one shared language for assets, components, health, and events even across brands and model years.

• Exposes clean, consistent data back out to OEM‑branded apps, dealer tools, and AI workflows.

This is exactly the space Aerovy focuses on: helping legacy OEMs build that unifying, ontological layer so they can launch vertical SaaS offerings without throwing away prior investments, or asking fleets to change their day to day systems.With that layer in place, the pains OEMs feel today such as data overload, limited internal bandwidth, and scattered views of their fleets turn into opportunities: more uptime services, smarter aftermarket, better support, and new recurring revenue streams that sit comfortably alongside OEM’s existing telematics partners.