Just as the winner in Gotland Runt 2021 sails over the finish line, it’s official that HiQ Sailing Team retains its track record of 27 hours, 4 minutes and 9 seconds, at an average speed of 13.01 knots from the competition in 2019. "Awesome! Sailing has always been a big part of HiQ's culture, so it feels especially fun that we can keep the record from 2019," says Sven Ivar Mørch, CEO of HiQ.

Gotland Runt is the sailing competition that is arranged every year by the Royal Swedish Yacht Club (KSSS) starting from Stockholm, through the archipelago and around Gotland, with a finish line at Sandhamn. It was first initiated in 1937 and is now the world’s largest annual ocean race.

Two years ago, in 2019, the HiQ Sailing Team entered the competition with the VO65 HiQ IV and the legendary skipper Bouwe Bekking, and the success was a fact. Not only did they win the competition, but they also set a new speed record for monohull boats. 27 hours, 4 minutes and 9 seconds after start, they sailed over the finish line and HiQ has since held the track record for both monohull and multihull boats. For the past 11 years, HiQ has also held the track record for multihull boats with the trimaran HiQ III with an average speed of 14.38 knots, and thus the fastest ever in the Gotland Runt competition.

HiQ now retains the track record for monohull boats of 27 hours, 4 minutes and 9 seconds, at an average speed of 13.01 knots from the competition in 2019.

“We worked hard for a long time with all the preparations as well as strategy and tactics before the competition in 2019, so it feels super fun that we can maintain our record even when this year’s competition is over!” says Erik Ridman, CMO at HiQ and crew member on the record sailing 2019.

Read more about the record: https://www.ksss.se/nyheter/nyheter/2019/rekordslakt-pa-af-offshore-race/

Visma Connect, the reporting technology market leader, and HiQ’s integration platform Frends will deliver Frends to Visma Connect’s rapidly growing integration services client base to the Dutch market. "It’s great to see Frends expand to even more countries. The demand for integration platforms is increasing and it shows at the speed in which Frends is growing," says Sven Ivar Mørch, CEO of HiQ.

The demand for integration services is growing rapidly. Most applications today are delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS software companies and their clients are looking for user-friendly and powerful integrations to maximize efficiency, provide new services and harness data value. At the same time, there are many companies that still use on-premises systems that could benefit from connectivity. A platform like Frends can be seamlessly used for both situations. Visma Connect, the reporting technology market leader, and HiQ’s integration platform Frends will deliver the platform to Visma Connect’s rapidly growing integration services client base.

“Low-Code integrations seem to amaze even the experienced integrators with flexibility and extendibility. Final touch is the pricing of Frends, which is, first of all, public and reasonable. Visma Connect has demonstrated the Frends expertise to several customers already,” says Juha Moisio, VP, Global sales at HiQ’s Frends.

The Frends integration platform empowers organizations to develop, manage and secure all API integrations and process automation within one powerful platform. Frends provides a lean, low-code and visual interface to build, deploy, manage and monitor all API integrations. Visma Connect’s integration specialists offer full-service support and can set up integration processes in Frends. Depending on the customer’s needs, they can also maintain and develop additional integrations. Visma Connect offers integration services to a wide range of companies and governments. These services range from consultancy, a dedicated team that helps you manage large roll outs, and full lifecycle management for APIs and integrations.

“Data sharing is one of the pillars of the digital society. Frends offers an intuitive, low-code and very powerful enterprise application integration platform that allows for secure and efficient API integrations. Exactly what you need for effective data transfer,” says Kim Andersen, MD at Visma Connect.

As a result of the demand for the Frends platform, it is now entering the Dutch market with Visma Connect. Visma will resell Frends as an offering to their clients, to help them launch integrations faster to market. Together with the client base of Visma they will help a lot of companies with their integration, on Frends’ quest to take over yet another country in Europe.

About Visma Connect:

In the digital age, data is the most important asset. Today, we share more and more data with each other, for all kinds of purposes. But how can we do this in a safe, fast and verifiable way? 

Visma Connect is the leader in enabling secure, qualified and trusted data exchange. Just as energy companies built the infrastructure that made the industrial revolution possible, Visma Connect is the utility provider of the digital society. 

https://vismaconnect.nl/en/

HiQ with its design team from Great Apes wins gold in the European Design Awards with Lux Nemus, an interactive projection experience and a part of Metsä Group’s visitor center, Pro Nemus. "Incredible that Great Apes wins this award! Fantastic work from the team and great that we get noticed on a European arena," says Sven Ivar Mørch, CEO of HiQ.

HiQ with its design team from Great Apes wins gold in the European Design Awards with Lux Nemus. The project, which consists of a collection of custom-built walls featuring Metsä’s wood, fibre and other innovative products, is an interactive projection experience that is part of the visitor center Pro Nemus by Metsä Group. The product collages have got projections that allow visitors to interact with the walls via a touch screen. Visitors can highlight individual products, explore and learn more about them through unique light projections. The core of the installation is to showcase how Metsä Group uses each part of a tree as efficiently as possible for the purpose that creates the most value.

“We are happy to receive one more gold in the European Design Awards together with Metsä Group. It feels extra special as there is so much competition in the awards,” says Niko Sipilä, Creative Director at Great Apes. 

The European Design Awards, or ED Awards, have been recognizing talented designers since 2007. It differs from other design competitions as the jury is composed of journalists and critics – and not the creators themselves. The jury consists of a variety of design magazines from across Europe.

HiQ’s Great Apes is one of the most internationally acclaimed digital agencies in Finland, with previous golds in the European Design Awards, including one for the concept and prototype for the digital driving license for Finnish Transport Safety Agency, Trafi, and the previous project Nemus Futurm with Metsä Group. Great Apes also has a track record of recognition in leading competitions like the Webby Awards, Red Dot Design Awards and Eurobest, as well as Nordic awards like the Grand One and Grafia’s “Best of the year”.

Read more:

https://europeandesign.org/submissions/lux-nemus/

St1 chooses HiQ’s Frends as the next steppingstone in their long-term partnership with HiQ. Frends will be the company’s new solution for API management and mobile back-end integrations. "To move even further into our partnership with St1 is a great thing. It proves that we can offer our clients a variation of services, tapping into more areas than just one. This enables us to become an even deeper partner and I’m very happy to see us growing in our partnership with St1," says Sven Ivar Mørch, CEO of HiQ.

HiQ has played an important part in St1’s work with digitalization projects by designing and developing business critical features to the mobile applications creating completely new businesses to the St1 and Shell brands. These projects have included the development of features such as mobile fueling & car washes, digital subscription-based coffee agreement and the St1 Mastercard account. Now the company selects HiQ for another, new area by selecting Frends as their new solution for API management and mobile back-end integrations. 

“It’s a true honor for HiQ and Frends to work with St1 and for an even deeper partnership. Our aim is to simplify and improve, to be able to do this for an already existing client at HiQ is the core of what we want to do, tap into more segments for each client,” says Jukka Rautio, Head of Frends at HiQ.

As St1 has developed a growing number of digital solutions, the company found themselves in a situation where the existing API architecture was not meeting the business requirements. St1 was looking for a solution that could help them reduce the IT burden and the total cost of ownership (TCO) as well as reduce delivery cycles of API’s and integrations and choose Frends for this as the old solution had grown complex and was costly to maintain.

With Frends, St1 moved the API-first architecture approach and created a secure ecosystem for all applications. Some of the implementations included: 

1. API management. Enables a full life-cycle management of API’s: designing, publishing, monitoring and managing. 
2. API gateway. Adds the additional layer of security to the microservices and back-end functions as a load balancer to handle requests in the most efficient manner.
    

“With Frends we can take care of all our API management requirements. We selected Frends as our long-term API management solution and so far, it has proven flexible, reliable and cost-efficient,” says Linda Pihl, Head of Digital at St1 Nordic.

With the new simplified API solution St1 was able to reduce the volume of unwanted traffic and increase reliability. The platform had over 1 000 000 process executions within the first month in use and currently handles over 3 million API calls per month. The partnership between St1 and HiQ also covers the support and maintenance operations for all the mobile apps and Frends integration solution.

For more technical information, please visit:
https://frends.com/customers/st1 

About St1:
www.st1.se