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percent on technology. Student Transpor- tation (Inc.) spends less than 1 percent.”
Easy Access and Security When it comes to accessibility and securi-
ty, Bostock, Civitella and Lavazzo say cloud- based systems offer the best of both worlds. For instance, with a number of data centers located around the country, inde-
pendenceIT is among the firms that provide authorized district personnel with access anywhere they have an Internet connection. At the same time, those high-powered data centers are ultra-security systems — think biometric scanners to gain admittance — that deliver levels of redundancy that a vast majority of customers couldn’t begin to create for themselves.
Lavazzo concurs, noting that Versa-
trans’ cloud services have the highest level of security certification required by the financial industry. “We aren’t putting customer data in some
rented data center or in a put-together room in some building. Security is very, very high,” he says. Marvel adds that TransTraks also backs
up its systems four times a day compared to districts that may back up files once a night, once a week or even once every few months. “We’ve had people delete things they
didn’t want to and we’d backed up the sys- tem just an hour earlier. Tere’s a big differ- ence between losing an hour of information instead of a whole day or more,” he cautions. Del Norte County (Calif.) Unified
School District Director of Transportation Pat Jensen said her department changed over to the cloud with TransTraks in June, and she’s already sold on its results. “I’ve found this to be much more efficient as I do not need the tech department to come over to transportation to help with the program if we have a problem,” Jensen says. “I can call Greg Marvel any time, and he can take control of the computers in transportation and fix any problem I have immediately instead of having to wait until the tech department can put us on their calendar. I have found the program is much faster and cuts down immensely on time I have to spend entering data. I fully recom- mend connecting to the cloud.”
Technology Marches On With different companies already offer-
...while buses IDLE away time – and money!
ing dozens of applications to make virtually every aspect of student transportation simpler and more efficient, it may be hard to imagine the technology is going to get even better in the months and years ahead. Providers have no doubt that it will. “Technology keeps moving on so the pres-
sure is still on us,” acknowledges Civitella, whose company is celebrating its 25th anni- versary in the school transportation industry. He foresees a coming wave of mobility and ease-of-use advances. Engelbert, meanwhile, predicts break-
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throughs in the way cloud-based systems connect with each other. “A district might have its own cloud in
five years. We have our own cloud, and they’ll need to talk to each other,” he says. —
Is your operation using the cloud? Vote in the Web Poll on our home page at
stnonline.com.
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