Two of the largest players in the GPS technology space now are under the same corporate umbrella.

Spireon, a portfolio company of Bertram Capital, on Wednesday announced the acquisition of privately held Inilex, another provider of GPS recovery software solutions. Inilex’s main product, Skylink, can enable dealers to significantly increase their financial and insurance revenue with high-value GPS-based add-on services.

As the automotive industry transforms in the connected car era, officials highlighted this acquisition enables Spireon to uniquely connect all major segments of the vehicle life cycle, ranging from franchised dealers to independent and buy-here, pay-here dealerships, fleets, finance companies, insurance companies and rental car fleets.

They added the acquisition expands Spireon’s strategy to offer rich services and business intelligence across any kind of vehicle.

As the market leader with 2.3 million connected vehicles, Spireon believes it is now more than four times the size of the next largest theft recovery provider, Lojack.

“The acquisition of Skylink expands Spireon reach into the new-car dealer segment, and positions us as a leader across the vehicle life cycle,” Spireon chief executive officer Marc Brungger said. “New-car dealers have strongly told us they need new ways to increase revenue by offering consumer applications that leverage the data coming from connected cars.”

Spireon emphasized that Skylink can leapfrog traditional theft recovery services by replacing legacy radio sets that have limited coverage with next-generation GPS applications that can be tracked with any internet connected device. Instead of relying on proprietary technology that only works with a small number of police vehicles, Skylink can offer ubiquitous coverage using national cellular networks.

And with the combination of Skylink’s dedicated 24/7 call recovery center that works directly with local law enforcement and cloud-based phone applications, officials insisted that vehicles can be recovered within minutes instead of waiting days for a dedicated police car to search manually for a radio signal.

“For new car dealers, Skylink offers value on multiple levels,” said Jeff Rachor, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Automotive, the fourth-largest automotive retailer.

“Skylink’s vehicle inventory management system allows for greater operating efficiencies, and as an aftermarket accessory, Skylink is a high value product that appeals to customers,” Rachor continued.

Inilex is coming off of an award-winning year

Inilex was named a finalist in the prestigious Arizona Governor’s Celebration of Innovation award, in which companies are selected for propelling Arizona to a position of economic strength. Inilex was the only company in the automotive industry to be recognized. The finalists were chosen by a selection committee of experts including members from Avnet, Intel Corp., Honeywell Aerospace and Science Foundation Arizona.

In addition, Inilex was selected to the Inc. 5000 — its third year making the list of fastest growing private companies in the nation.

At No. 1056, Inilex posted an impressive 422-percent growth rate.

Both the Inc. 5000 and the Governor’s Celebration of Innovation awards come on the heels of Inilex’s position as one of the “Most Promising Companies in America” in 2014, according to Forbes.

Now Inilex is part of Spireon.

“We are excited to join the Spireon family,” Inilex CEO Michael Maledon said. “This transaction allows us to scale our sales and marketing efforts to reach more dealers nationwide.

Backed by world-class infrastructure, our customers gain the added assurance that Skylink will continue on our promise to deliver high value solutions and results,” Maledon went on to say.

Bertram Capital partner Jared Ruger added, “We are very excited to extend Spireon’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform with the addition of Inilex’s new-car dealer solutions.

“We see a tremendous opportunity to introduce additional connected car applications to Spireon’s installed base of 2.3 million active vehicle subscribers,” Ruger said.

Editor’s note: Look for a follow-up report stemming from Spireon hosting a conference call to discuss the acquisition in a future edition of SubPrime News Update.