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Technology Updates

Different Kind of Cloud Approaches Logistics

Anybody remotely connected to the transportation industry is well aware that our industry has made significant progress in the last few years when it comes to technology. As our normal business cycles seem to be getting shorter (In as little as ten years we have experienced a major driver shortage, a huge economic recession, more regulatory bewilderment and back to a driver shortage) we are starting to leverage technology in ways that make things easier for our customer and at the same time streamline the way we deploy our human capital.
As we emerge from the recent recession, there is talk of cloud looming over the industry – but this one is not as ominous as the dark clouds of the economic downturn. I am talking about cloud server technology. Simply put, cloud technology is where applications and data that we are accustomed to seeing on our “local” computer, are know being hosted remotely so that all you need to access them is an internet connection. An example of this is where instead of accessing a dispatch program on your computer or server, you can now access this same program just by having a WIFI connection – the program is being run effectively off site or “in the cloud”.
While companies in all industries can benefit from this new “asset-light” approach to data organization, the transportation industry should be very excited. Here are a few reasons why:
1. There are many technology platforms that the logistics professional may access on a daily basis to get their job done. These include, dispatch, transportation management software, tracking technology, and various communication platforms. All of these platforms are constantly evolving and improving. When these platforms are hosted in the “cloud” the end-user immediately benefits from the upgrades in real-time without having to manage the upgrades locally.
2. Today companies are collaborating at every stage of the business process from production to delivery. When critical data is hosted in the cloud, people access the specified information from anywhere and if desired customers and suppliers can access that same data to make more informed decisions based on real-time information.
3. Today employees are more mobile than ever. Most people are accustomed to doing some part of their job while away from the office or via their Smart-phone or other similar device. Additionally, these “smart devices” usually do not have the power to run application software, so accessing the programs online is the only option.…

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Latest Technology In Computer

CIO Cloud Computing 101 – Problems With Clouds

Cloud computing is all the rage these days and everyone who is anyone is making plans to implement at least some flavor of it as soon as possible. It turns out that the decision to go with a cloud computing solution for your IT department might not be as simple as some would lead you to believe. There are challenges to successfully using a cloud and we need to talk about them…

The Seven Challenges Of Cloud Computing

With all of the magazine articles, conferences, and vendors who have shown up to sell it, it’s easy to forget that utility computing is still an emerging technology – it’s not quite fully baked yet. Neal Leavitt has spent some time studying this area and has identified the following seven issues. CIOs will need to investigate their potential effects before agreeing to any cloud-based initiative:

Control: this is the biggest issue when it comes to using utility computing. By design a company gives up control when they sign up to use a firm’s hosting resources. This means that the provider can make changes to the infrastructure without telling the company at any time. This needs to be managed.

Performance / Reliability: When you are using resources that are not located within your firm’s buildings the question of how much computing horsepower you have available when you need it comes up. Additionally, failures will happen and so understanding how you’ll be notified and how quickly issues will be resolved is critical.

Security: You know that you can protect your mission critical business data when it’s inside your own walls, but what happens when somebody else is managing it for you?

Cost Of Bandwidth: You should be saving money on buying hardware and staffing to maintain it. However, you’ll need to very accurately forecast you bandwidth costs in order to determine the true cost of using the cloud.

Vendor Lock-In: true standards for how applications communicate and control applications that are in a vendor’s cloud have not yet been established. This means that vendors are creating their own proprietary interfaces that could end up tying you to a vendor for longer than you would like.

Transparency: basically this comes down to the difficulty that you’ll have doing an audit of your IT resources. Since you don’t have true visibility into the cloud you can’t say for certain who has access to your data and how you can keep people out of your sensitive data.

Reliability: I’d like to say that clouds are 100% reliable, but I can’t. The trade rags are filled with stories about connections that have gone down and back-up diesel generators that have failed to switch on. There is risk with every decision, you need to decide if you can handle the risk that comes with cloud computing.

Final Thoughts

As exciting as the new field of cloud computing is, CIOs need to slow down and take a deep breath. This is new stuff and that means that not all of the details have been worked out just yet. There are seven major areas that could have a dramatic impact on your company’s ability to get the most out of cloud computing. Do your homework and see if cloud computing offers you a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.…

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Technology News Articles 

Install And Use Artistic Cloud Apps On A New Pc

– An excellent place to buy computers, pc components, electronics, software program, equipment, and DVDs on-line. Know-how evolves quick, and if you purchase a brand new laptop immediately, you may not have noticed a more moderen one was set for release tomorrow — and would have probably cost the same as the one you simply bought, or made yours inexpensive to buy.

If you already know ‘Laptop Maker A’ comes out with a brand new model around the similar time yearly, count on to get a reduction on an old mannequin simply before a new one comes out, or wait till the brand new one is out so that you’ve the newest expertise.

Basic: When you plan to only have your pc and no peripherals, it’s possible you’ll wish to opt for the largest exhausting drive you can (measured in gigabytes, or terabytes for extra giant drives), since your entire information and packages will likely be saved on the computer.

Should you can handle having only a few bigger packages put in in your pc at a time, and plan to maintain every little thing else stored on an external gadget, you can probably get a fast gadget with a solid-state drive to maintain the computer zippy always, and nonetheless manage to stream excessive-quality media by way of a USB connection — some applications could even have the ability to run from an exterior hard drive.…