Developments Within the Freight Software Industry
The shipping and transport industries, like every other business sector, are having to rethink IT in light of advances such as Cloud Computing and “virtualisation.”
For businesses IT has typically been time and capital intensive with firms buying their own hardware and software, paying IT personnel to maintain it and update it, and then renewing the equipment every few years. The latest advances are seeing IT provision evolve more along the lines of an out-sourced utility like electricity and gas, paid for as you go.
Cloud’s flexibility and its ease of accessibility by any mobile web browser make it of particular interest to carriers who increasingly rely on continuous updates of technologies such as GPS, and of those which give the status of the vehicles and of the cargo in their system.
Cloud gives access to vast computing resources hosted by providers such as Google, that users connect to and use as and when they need. Software providers deliver your application, already developed to your needs, via the Cloud or the SaaS (Software as a Solution) route. Instead of holding information on its own servers, a company’s data and websites are hosted on the provider’s servers.
Even though the web-browser tools that are used to access the Cloud may not have programmes installed on them, “virtualisation” means the tool looks as if, for example, Windows or Linux are running on it so end-users feel familiar with the browser tool.
The Cloud approach certainly seems to be here to stay. One industry forecast is that SaaS revenue will top US$12 billion in 2011 (from US$10 billion in 2010) and reach $21.3 billion by 2015.
Hemant Patel, Joint Managing Director at Fargo Systems, who specialise in software solutions for the shipping and transport industries, says: “Cloud Computing will continue to grow. It allows companies to outsource their IT, drastically reduces the capital costs of equipment purchase, offers the security of maintenance and warranty programmes and back-up, and is suitable for companies of any size.”
For transport and logistics sectors the systems are highly attractive as they allow total mobility throughout the logistics chain. Whether at a conference, with a customer, on a sales trip, in a hotel, at home or on the road, personnel can use their iPhone, smart Android phone, laptop or other Windows mobile device to access all the data available to them on their office desktop.
The future will also be built around higher speed and greater efficiency, typically using 64 bit processing and advances in internet access via Wifi and 3G.
Hemant Patel continues: “The main operating systems for back-end database processing are still likely to be based around MS Windows Server and various Unix Flavours such as Linux and SCO-Unix. End-user tools will be mainly based around mobile and tablet-based devices running Android, Windows 7 or Apple iOS.
“For the freight sector these IT changes will be significant thanks to the declining cost of new technology and an increased awareness among transport operators of the technology’s potential benefits.
“IT advances could deliver even greater gains for non-integrated intermodal users as electronic documentation replaces the paper trail that follows cargo movements, and as customer service and status requests take place via electronic data interchange.”