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Updated:
1/7/2008 8:00:00 AM
Web-Based Software Is Appealing to Fleets
By Stephen Bennett, Special to Transport Topics
This story appears in the Jan. 7 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
For some fleet managers and maintenance supervisors today, a routine part of their job is accessing a secure Web site to view, say, fuel expenses for last month or a report on which trucks need servicing in the coming week.
They can check that information, thanks to the convergence of the Internet, wireless communications and onboard computing — technologies that generate information and a need for software and hardware to manage it for fleets, said executives who work in information technology.
“From a technology trend point of view, everything today is Web-based,” said John Hines III, president of the Asset Solutions division of Maximus, Reston, Va., which provides management software to fleets. “We have not sold anything but Web-based software for the last few years.”
Web-based software is appealing to fleets because it can be accessed for use over the Internet, and it can run on vendors’ servers. Fleets thus avoid the installation and updating tasks that would be required if software were installed on their own computers.
>In a typical case, data from a driver’s handheld device, or from a truck’s engine control module, can be transmitted over a wireless network to Web-based software, which then presents the information on a secure Web site for the fleet. This setup depends on reliable data transmission, and that’s where the advent of widespread wireless coverage comes in.
“We’ve been talking for years in the industry about ubiquitous wireless coverage,” said Bill Presler, senior business development manager of Panasonic Computer Solutions, Secaucus, N.J., which manufactures the Toughbook line of ruggedized laptops. Now it has become a reality, he said.
Cellular networks today also are high-speed — offering what Presler called “a fat pipe” and enabling nearly continuous transmission of large volumes of data from drivers and vehicles to fleets, and vice versa. Data from the field can include information about deliveries that drivers have completed, for example, or details on fuel consumption and vehicle speed from trucks’ engine-control modules.
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