PredictWind

Borne out of the technology that would become an essential tool in the America's Cup yacht racing arena, PredictWind, which is based in Auckland, New Zealand, makes impressively detailed and accurate wind prediction available to sailors around the world, at a reasonable price. In 2000, PredictWind founder, New Zealander Jon Bilger, was hired to run the Alinghi weather team for the 2003 America's Cup. Working with CSIRO meteorologist Jack Katzfey, Jon Bilger conducted a period of intensive research into different weather modeling technologies, and CSIRO was selected to provide the foundational technology that would become the backbone of the weather program. Over the years the application of the technology was intensively tested and refined, and ultimately for the 2007 America's Cup, its predictions were matched against actual observations, using the extensive weather buoy network of 23 buoys and 30 land based station made available for the event, and found to be impressively accurate. The ability of the high resolution weather model to predict changes in the direction and speed of the wind proved the technology was a leap ahead of alternative weather models, and the challenge became to commercialize the technology for the wider recreational marine market. Sailors around the world were hungry for detailed and accurate predictions of wind strength and direction. But a variety of free and low cost options were available, and the question was, would the market pay for the additional cost of a higher resolution and more accurate wind forecast. When the PredictWind.com website launched in 2008 as a no-cost service, it experienced rapid growth, gaining up to 1,000 new subscriptions on a busy weekend and hitting its first 10,000 users soon after launching. PredictWind turned to a pay-for-use model in 2008 and in 2010, its second year as a commercial enterprise, turnover was doubled, and it has nearly sustained this growth rate for the two years since. Since its inception more than 50% of revenue has been invested in product development and computing power, enabling forecast tools that include weather routing, trip planning, boat tracking, live observations and forecast alerts. Wind forecast maps and graphs and text are generated for 20,000 worldwide forecast locations and significant computing resources are required to run the model in this configuration, providing four forecasts a day for all the PredictWind locations around the world. In February 2012 PredictWind launched its first specialist application for iPhones and Android Smartphones. The App offers the same features as the website and makes it more convenient to use a smartphone to view and use the data.