But what is it? Why are more and more companies hosting their and their user’s data on it? Here are three reasons why you need cloud-based software and storage for your parking asset.
1. Economies of scale and cost certainty,
It’s a simple example of economies of scale.
Cloud storage is flexible and able to be tailored to your requirements now and in the future, not yesterday. There is no hardware to purchase, no fixed amount of storage to physically have onsite, and no capital being used upfront to purchase costly server equipment. You can add or remove capacity on-demand, quickly change performance and retention characteristics, and only pay for storage that you actually use.
Think of cloud-storage suppliers in the same way that you might an airline. For most of us, it would not make good sense to pay the hefty price tag to purchase an entire aircraft nor would most of us know how to fly it. That’s before you get to landing fees, the price of fuel, and other expenses.
Instead, we go online, enter our travel preferences, and purchase the seats that we need from airlines, who have the skilled pilots and large capacities to spread these costs across many passengers, making air travel more affordable.
You are charged one, annual price for data hosting, remote maintenance on the server, access to the reporting and analytics software, and remote monitoring and optimization from our engineers. It’s as easy as that – no hidden or surprise costs, giving you full visibility and certainty of your annual costs.
2. You’re always up to date!
When it comes to maintenance and keeping your system up for over 99% of the time, being cloud-based gives software and server a few key advantages over physical servers. It allows us to pull the aircraft into the hangar from time-to-time to fit it with the latest part to improve performance (a new reporting or analytics tool requested by a customer) or get better fuel efficiency (faster data transfer).
It also means we can have telemetry, to tell us when maintenance is required on engines (sensors), wings (on-site communications gateways), or landing gears (signage and guidance lights). In many cases, a team of remote engineers can perform maintenance without even needing to dispatch an engineer, also saving you money.
Technology changes rapidly. When development teams are ready to execute an upgrade or perform maintenance, the infrastructure should never slow them down. With a cloud-based server and software, we can roll out the latest and greatest upgrade in the blink of an eye, without the need to call out a technician to visit the site, all for one, fixed, annual license fee.
3. Data security,
The subject of data security is serious and cloud-based storage and software is uniquely positioned to provide solutions in this space.
Firstly, natural disasters, human error, or electrical/mechanical faults should not result in data loss. Data is hosted in multiple locations and our server is able to pull your data from any of these locations, meaning if a server fails or goes down in one location, your data is safe at another and able to be accessed and added to – something which our server does automatically.
Secondly, Cyber attacks are a real and credible threat to any operator of connected hardware and software. Ransomware is bad. Malware is bad.
If you’re not familiar with these terms, ransomware is a form of malware that encrypts a victim’s files. The attacker then demands a ransom from the victim to restore access to the data upon payment.
Users are shown instructions for how to pay a fee to get the decryption key. The costs can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands to even hundreds of thousands of dollars, payable to cybercriminals, normally in Bitcoin. If you don’t pay, either your data is destroyed or remains locked until you do pay.
While cloud-based servers and software are not immune to such attacks, they are well-positioned to be a part of your data protection strategy. With the cloud-based approach, you are effectively outsourcing and putting your data security and protection policy and strategy in the hands of experts, whose business model relies on having stringent policies and protections in place.
Cloud-based storage and software is now a completely main-stream method of storing and hosting data. It’s flexible, you can access it from anywhere, it provides cost certainty, ensures your system is always running the latest and the greatest, is well maintained, and protects your data. Most importantly, it just works for you and for your business.
Christian Hermansen is Frogparking’s Brand Manager. He can be reached at Christian@frogparking.com.
