Directory:Agrilink - Revision history

AquaSpy: /* Agrilink Holdings */

2009-12-21T03:29:24Z

Agrilink Holdings

AquaSpy: /* Company Incarnations */

2009-12-21T03:00:20Z

Company Incarnations

AquaSpy: /* Agrilink Water Management */

2009-12-21T02:53:04Z

Agrilink Water Management

AquaSpy: /* Agrilink Water Management */

2009-12-21T02:51:35Z

Agrilink Water Management

AquaSpy: /* Agrilink Water Management */

2009-12-21T02:50:57Z

Agrilink Water Management

AquaSpy: /* Agrilink Water Management */

2009-12-21T02:50:36Z

Agrilink Water Management

AquaSpy: /* Agrilink Water Management */

2009-12-21T02:47:34Z

Agrilink Water Management

AquaSpy: /* AquaSpy Group */

2009-12-21T02:19:51Z

AquaSpy Group

AquaSpy: /* From Agrilink to AquaSpy - A history of Agrilink */

2009-12-21T02:17:39Z

From Agrilink to AquaSpy - A history of Agrilink

AquaSpy: /* The C-Probe Corporation */

2009-12-21T02:16:50Z

The C-Probe Corporation

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 Robinson approached Adcon Telemetry ande secured the distribution rights for their products in Australia. Robinson and Moller reached agreement on allowing Robinson to take on the Agrilink name and business model and Agrilink Holdings was born.
-The company initially operated from an office in Melbourne St, North Adelaide, South Australia. The first employee, an office administrator named Tanya, joined Nigel from Sentek. The second employee, was also an ex Sentek staffer, Wayne Hogben. The third employee, Gavin Wheatcroft was employed fresh from university. Having developed a likely hit list of companies likely to be interested in weather data, the company set out installing weather stations on a trial basis on grower's properties. In each district one of Adcon's telemetry base stations would be deployed to collect the data from the radio data loggers which formed the heart of each station. A computer in the company's office would dial out via landline telephone each day to collect the data and store it on Adcon's addVANTAGE software. If at the end of the trial the customer wished to keep the weather station, it would be left on site and the customer invoiced; if not, it would be moved to another property.
+The company initially operated from an office in Melbourne St, North Adelaide, South Australia.  Having identified the companies and regions likely to be interested in weather data, the company set out installing weather stations on a trial basis on grower's properties. In each district one of Adcon's telemetry base stations would be deployed to collect the data from the radio data loggers which formed the heart of each station. A computer in the company's office would dial out via landline telephone each day to collect the data and store it on Adcon's addVANTAGE software. If at the end of the trial the customer wished to keep the weather station, it would be left on site and the customer invoiced; if not, it would be moved to another property. Many irrigation regions around Australia adopted the weather networks to access weather data.
-Whereas in Europe interest in disease management was high, the same could not be said for Australia. Sentek's efforts had proven that there was however a good market for soil moisture monitoring, however many potential customers were put off by the need to install cables to link the probes back to a central data logger. Robinson could see what Sentek had failed to: the opportunity to use Adcon's telemetry products to deploy radio linked soil moisture probes. However Adcon's current family of radio data loggers were too expensive to be used for the purpose. What was needed was a lower cost, short range radio. Use of the Sentek soil moisture probes was out, mainly because the company was not interested in developing a new interface to replace the proprietary interface used to date by their probes.
+Whereas in Europe interest in disease management was high, the adoption of using wireless weather stations running remote models for disease management in Australia was still in its infancy. Irrigation agronomists had proven that there was a good market for soil moisture monitoring, however many potential customers were put off by the manual reading of soil moisture with neutron probes or tensiometers or the need to install cables to link insitu probes back to a central data logger. Robinson could see what other sensor companies had failed to: the opportunity to use wireless telemetry products like Adcon, to deploy radio linked soil moisture probes. However Adcon's current family of radio data loggers were too expensive to be used for the purpose. What was needed was a lower cost, short range radio. Use of the Sentek soil moisture probes was out, mainly because the company was not interested in developing a new interface to replace the proprietary interface used to date by their probes.
 Adcon agreed not just to make a new low power radio, but also to begin development of a capacitance sensor. The latter development was shelved when Agrilink decided to take the task on themselves.
 ===GolfLinx===

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 ==Company Incarnations==
-The history of Agrilink can be traced to a small company operating in Western Australia, Agrilink Water Management. After a number of years trading as Agrilink - Agrilink Holdings, Agrilink International, Agrilink Florida - the company morphed in to AquaSpy in 2008.
+The history of Agrilink can be traced to a small company operating in Western Australia, Agrilink Water Management. After a number of years trading as Agrilink - Agrilink Holdings, Agrilink International, Agrilink Florida - the company rebranded to AquaSpy in 2007.
 ===Agrilink Water Management===

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 ===Agrilink Water Management===
-Agrilink Water Management was founded by Peter Moller in 1990. The Ag Chem company Moller had been working for exited out of servicing the Horticulture market and rather than looking for employment, decided to start his own company. Agrilink Water Management began life as a water management consultancy using the technology at time - neutron probe, providing irrigation management advice to growers in the south west of Western Australia.
+Agrilink Water Management was founded by Peter Moller in 1990. The Ag Chem company Moller had been working for exited out of servicing the Horticulture market and rather than looking for employment, decided to start his own company. Agrilink Water Management began life as a water management consultancy using the technology at the time (neutron probe) to provide irrigation management advice to growers in the south west of Western Australia.
 When Adelaide based company, Sentek Sensor Technologies <ref>[http://www.sentek.com.au Sentek Sensor Technology web site]</ref>introduced the EnviroSCAN capacitance soil moisture sensor, Moller was one of the first consultants to adopt this technology. The company then switched from taking weekly neutron probe readings to consulting based on the continuous soil moisture data the new product delivered. This provided customers with far more information and helped increase the value of the services the company provided.

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 ===Agrilink Water Management===
-Agrilink Water Management was founded by Peter Moller in 1990. The Ag Chem company Moller had been working for exited out of servicing the Horticulture market and, rather than looking for employment, decided to start his own company. Agrilink Water Management began life as a water management consultancy using the technology at time - neutron probe, providing irrigation management advice to growers in the south west of Western Australia.
+Agrilink Water Management was founded by Peter Moller in 1990. The Ag Chem company Moller had been working for exited out of servicing the Horticulture market and rather than looking for employment, decided to start his own company. Agrilink Water Management began life as a water management consultancy using the technology at time - neutron probe, providing irrigation management advice to growers in the south west of Western Australia.
 When Adelaide based company, Sentek Sensor Technologies <ref>[http://www.sentek.com.au Sentek Sensor Technology web site]</ref>introduced the EnviroSCAN capacitance soil moisture sensor, Moller was one of the first consultants to adopt this technology. The company then switched from taking weekly neutron probe readings to consulting based on the continuous soil moisture data the new product delivered. This provided customers with far more information and helped increase the value of the services the company provided.

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 ===Agrilink Water Management===
-Agrilink Water Management was founded by Peter Moller in 1990. The Agri Chem company Moller had been working for exited out of servicing the Horticulture market and, rather than looking for employment, decided to start his own company. Agrilink Water Management began life as a water management consultancy using the technology at time - neutron probe, providing irrigation management advice to growers in the south west of Western Australia.
+Agrilink Water Management was founded by Peter Moller in 1990. The Ag Chem company Moller had been working for exited out of servicing the Horticulture market and, rather than looking for employment, decided to start his own company. Agrilink Water Management began life as a water management consultancy using the technology at time - neutron probe, providing irrigation management advice to growers in the south west of Western Australia.
 When Adelaide based company, Sentek Sensor Technologies <ref>[http://www.sentek.com.au Sentek Sensor Technology web site]</ref>introduced the EnviroSCAN capacitance soil moisture sensor, Moller was one of the first consultants to adopt this technology. The company then switched from taking weekly neutron probe readings to consulting based on the continuous soil moisture data the new product delivered. This provided customers with far more information and helped increase the value of the services the company provided.

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 ===Agrilink Water Management===
-Agrilink Water Management was founded by Peter Moller in 1997 (Layden 2002). The company Moller had been working for closed its agriculture division and, rather than looking for employment, decided to start his own company. Agrilink Water Management began life as a neutron probe consultancy (Moller had been introduced to these then new devices by his former employer)  providing irrigation management advice to growers in the south west of Western Australia. As Moller related to the Naples Daily News in 2002, after the company for whom he was working closed its agriculture division, he "had an entrepreneurial seizure one day, and thought I would go into business" <ref>[http://www.ultimatecitrus.com/aquaspy/News/Naples_Daily_News.html Naples Daily News, Florida 4 November 2002]</ref>.
+Agrilink Water Management was founded by Peter Moller in 1990. The company Moller had been working for closed its agriculture division and, rather than looking for employment, decided to start his own company. Agrilink Water Management began life as a water management consultancy using the technology at time - neutron probe, providing irrigation management advice to growers in the south west of Western Australia.
-When Adelaide based company, Sentek Sensor Technologies <ref>[http://www.sentek.com.au Sentek Sensor Technology web site]</ref>introduced the EnviroSCAN capacitance soil moisture sensor, Moller signed on as a dealer. The company then switched from taking weekly neutron probe readings to consulting based on the continuous soil moisture data the new product delivered. This provided customers with far more information and helped increase the value of the services the company provided. At its peak the business employed Moller and two young consultant agronomists. Moller had ambitious plans for the company and called in a business consultant to help prepare a business plan to drive the company forward. Progress stalled when his newly appointed business manager and one of his agronomists left in quick succession.
+When Adelaide based company, Sentek Sensor Technologies <ref>[http://www.sentek.com.au Sentek Sensor Technology web site]</ref>introduced the EnviroSCAN capacitance soil moisture sensor, Moller was one of the first consultants to adopt this technology. The company then switched from taking weekly neutron probe readings to consulting based on the continuous soil moisture data the new product delivered. This provided customers with far more information and helped increase the value of the services the company provided.
 ===Agrilink Holdings===
 Agrilink Holdings was added to the Australian companies register on 1/5/1997 (ACN 078 399 158, registered name AGRILINK HOLDINGS PTY LTD). Robinson had by then left Sentek and was looking for new opportunities.

← Older revision		Revision as of 02:19, 21 December 2009
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	In November 2007 the "Agrilink" brand was dropped in favour of a new name - Aquaspy Group. The company's latest soil moisture sensor had been christened the Aquaspy and the company adopted that moniker. The board cited the reason for the change as being that the previous name was "too strongly linked to agriculture and didn't reflect other products and services. This includes a turf and golf course business that is tapping a large and receptive market" <ref>[http://emerald.gmi2.com/vol2/portfolio.cfm Emerald Technology Jan 2008]</ref>.		In November 2007 the "Agrilink" brand was dropped in favour of a new name - Aquaspy Group. The company's latest soil moisture sensor had been christened the Aquaspy and the company adopted that moniker. The board cited the reason for the change as being that the previous name was "too strongly linked to agriculture and didn't reflect other products and services. This includes a turf and golf course business that is tapping a large and receptive market" <ref>[http://emerald.gmi2.com/vol2/portfolio.cfm Emerald Technology Jan 2008]</ref>.

−	At the time of the name change, AquaSpy ~~claimed to have~~ “more than 50,000 AquaSpy sensors in use around the world” <ref>[http://www.winebiz.com.au/dwn/details.asp?ID=1355 WineBiz magazine, November 2007]</ref>. It is not clear whether this figure is related to the actual number of probes sold of to the actual number of sensors installed on the probes. As the new probes have 10 sensors, the number of probes sold would be much lower..	+	At the time of the name change, AquaSpy had “more than 50,000 AquaSpy sensors in use around the world” <ref>[http://www.winebiz.com.au/dwn/details.asp?ID=1355 WineBiz magazine, November 2007]</ref>.
−
−	~~The Aquaspy brand was mated to a new corporate web site, with revised look and feel. Underneath it all was the same staff and systems, including the quickly fading AgWise platform~~.

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 ==From Agrilink to AquaSpy - A history of Agrilink==
 [[Category:Corporate history]]
-The founder of '''Agrilink''' had a simple goal: to become the Dell or Microsoft of the agriculture sector, to revolutionise farming by making available a host of  web based services.
+The founder of '''Agrilink''' had a simple goal: to become the Dell or Microsoft of the agriculture sector, to revolutionise farming by making available a host of  web based services.  This article provides an insight in to the history of the company.
 ==Company Incarnations==