Heavy Duty Trucking, April 2018

upon the data but for critical data the best thing is to have both Poulidis says Jerry Robertson chief technology officer for TMS provider Bolt System admits to being old school and suggests keeping both types of backups Some things like compliance or financial records Im going to keep it somewhere in a secure vault in my area Dick Hyatt president and CEO of Decisiv thinks the backup trend is pointing more toward the cloud The economics of cloud based storage are driving a mass transition away from on site storage he says But again each company will have different requirements for backup storage and recovery The bottom line is that cloud computing offers numerous advantages to trucking companies and to their technology vendors as well But before rushing to put all your systems and data in the cloud keep in mind that the best most sophisticated cloud system is only as good as the internet connection Without that you could be out of business HDT APRIL 2018 62 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM The cloud and data backups Most public cloud systems provide inexpensive backup options often with redundancy so there are multiple backups available if something goes wrong But should all your data be backed up this way For Sandberg it comes down to the question How critical is the data Backups on a public cloud might take 24 hours or longer to recover data which can halt a fleets operations he explains If you need it faster consider other backup methods Barnes who comes from an IT security background believes the more backups the better You can have as many backups as you want and you can still make more The cloud has made this easier he added with some cloud companies offering disaster recovery services as well as backup vaulting These types of services are more readily available today Barnes says A few years ago such services were beyond the reach of all but the largest companies in terms of cost Having both types of backup in the cloud and on site or nearby is an option that many recommend Again it depends Fleets have been using SaaS software as a service applications for years The recent electronic logging device mandate has prompted those that had not invested in on board technologies to take the plunge In many cases cloud based applications and storage offer the most economically advantageous option For most that means their data will be cloud based But that doesnt mean all data will be stored there at least not any time soon and at least not in public cloud systems Chris Sandberg vice president of information technology for PeopleNet points out that a certain amount of a fleets workload can be handled more efficiently in a private cloud Pete Allen chief client officer Mix Telematics thinks the move toward the cloud started about seven years ago when the telematics model most prevalent in the industry moved from one where the fleet bought the software to the current subscription based SaaS model The old model is very rare today he adds If telematics providers are not using the cloud they are not keeping pace Still some companies have little data in the cloud says Ron Godine vice president information technology and cloud services TMW For premises based operations there is probably little data he says Its a different story for smaller operators that adopted SaaS systems for scheduling dispatching TMS systems email EDI and mobile communications For these operations virtually all of it is in the cloud This would include financial sales analytical business data shipment tracking internal operations documents scanned images and transportation documents video and probably a bunch more he adds As far as the long term trend it is inevitable that all but the largest fleets will need to use cloud based systems to remain competitive Godine says I see no limits as to what type of data could or should be stored in the cloud WILL ALL YOUR DATA BE IN THE CLOUD This illustration shows the types of data that can pass through the cloud including that generated by the driver vehicle sensors or dispatch CLOUD BASED DATA SOURCE PEOPLENET