Diesel Direct Uses the Cloud to Persevere Through Power Outages
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Industries
- Transportation
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
The Challenge
The company relied on the expertise of a staff of experienced billing agents, account managers and administrative specialists whose primary tools were one giant customer database built on Microsoft Access, Exchange email and the anachronistic but effective use of paper invoices delivered via fax or snail mail.
This process was effective until Irene made it clear that if power went out in the main office Diesel Direct wouldn’t be able to send out that fast flurry of invoices every day. And without that, their cash-flow situation would be greatly impacted very quickly.
Their clients, fleet managers for distribution companies, understand quickly how Diesel Direct can save them money by letting them trade a few extra cents per gallon of fuel for the FTE cost of having their own people handle the fuelling and maintenance and reporting, plus the cost of having the truck off the road while they’re doing it. Diesel Direct’s services allow them to skip most of that. The model doesn’t require a lot of technology, but Diesel Direct can’t accomplish anything if its minimal IT infrastructure is offline for any length of time.
The Customer
Diesel Direct
About The Customer
When Hurricane Irene hit Eastern Massachusetts last August, the roads were filled with broken trees and downed power lines, leaving many without power for more than a week. When Diesel Direct, a trucking and construction businesses, was affected by this p
The Solution
Diesel Direct hired Virtustream, because of the range of alternatives available in each of three categories that it needed--private, virtual private and public cloud.
Diesel Direct hired Virtustream to host its data and slightly upgraded versions of its software so employees could work from the same office using the same interfaces and workflow they always had. The only difference was that the data and apps were all housed in a data center outside Washington, D.C. and replicated to another.
From an operational IT perspective, the biggest benefit of signing up with Virtustream is the rapid, repeatable changes in capacity Virtustream allows its customers. Diesel Direct’s business is “bursty”--doubling or tripling from one day to the next, changing with the flow of invoices.
Virtustream’s service contract allows Diesel Direct to set a relatively high average baseline, then change its top capacity demand limit as often as it wants--every day if that’s what works for the customer. Adding capacity is as easy as changing a configuration screen; so is reducing capacity when the spike disappears.
Diesel Direct hired Virtustream to host its data and slightly upgraded versions of its software so employees could work from the same office using the same interfaces and workflow they always had. The only difference was that the data and apps were all housed in a data center outside Washington, D.C. and replicated to another.
From an operational IT perspective, the biggest benefit of signing up with Virtustream is the rapid, repeatable changes in capacity Virtustream allows its customers. Diesel Direct’s business is “bursty”--doubling or tripling from one day to the next, changing with the flow of invoices.
Virtustream’s service contract allows Diesel Direct to set a relatively high average baseline, then change its top capacity demand limit as often as it wants--every day if that’s what works for the customer. Adding capacity is as easy as changing a configuration screen; so is reducing capacity when the spike disappears.
Operational Impact
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Airport SCADA Systems Improve Service Levels
Modern airports are one of the busiest environments on Earth and rely on process automation equipment to ensure service operators achieve their KPIs. Increasingly airport SCADA systems are being used to control all aspects of the operation and associated facilities. This is because unplanned system downtime can cost dearly, both in terms of reduced revenues and the associated loss of customer satisfaction due to inevitable travel inconvenience and disruption.
Case Study
IoT-based Fleet Intelligence Innovation
Speed to market is precious for DRVR, a rapidly growing start-up company. With a business model dependent on reliable mobile data, managers were spending their lives trying to negotiate data roaming deals with mobile network operators in different countries. And, even then, service quality was a constant concern.
Case Study
Digitize Railway with Deutsche Bahn
To reduce maintenance costs and delay-causing failures for Deutsche Bahn. They need manual measurements by a position measurement system based on custom-made MEMS sensor clusters, which allow autonomous and continuous monitoring with wireless data transmission and long battery. They were looking for data pre-processing solution in the sensor and machine learning algorithms in the cloud so as to detect critical wear.
Case Study
Cold Chain Transportation and Refrigerated Fleet Management System
1) Create a digital connected transportation solution to retrofit cold chain trailers with real-time tracking and controls. 2) Prevent multi-million dollar losses due to theft or spoilage. 3) Deliver a digital chain-of-custody solution for door to door load monitoring and security. 4) Provide a trusted multi-fleet solution in a single application with granular data and access controls.
Case Study
Vehicle Fleet Analytics
Organizations frequently implement a maintenance strategy for their fleets of vehicles using a combination of time and usage based maintenance schedules. While effective as a whole, time and usage based schedules do not take into account driving patterns, environmental factors, and sensors currently deployed within the vehicle measuring crank voltage, ignition voltage, and acceleration, all of which have a significant influence on the overall health of the vehicle.In a typical fleet, a large percentage of road calls are related to electrical failure, with battery failure being a common cause. Battery failures result in unmet service agreement levels and costly re-adjustment of scheduled to provide replacement vehicles. To reduce the impact of unplanned maintenance, the transportation logistics company was interested in a trial of C3 Vehicle Fleet Analytics.
Case Study
3M Gains Real-Time Insight with Cloud Solution
The company has a long track record of innovative technology solutions. For example, 3M helps its customers optimize parking operations by automating fee collection and other processes. To improve support for this rapidly expanding segment, 3M needed to automate its own data collection and reporting. The company had recently purchased the assets of parking, tolling, and automatic license plate reader businesses, and required better insight into these acquisitions. Chad Reed, Global Business Manager for 3M Parking Systems, says, “With thousands of installations across the world, we couldn’t keep track of our software and hardware deployments, which made it difficult to understand our market penetration.” 3M wanted a tracking application that sales staff could use to get real-time information about the type and location of 3M products in parking lots and garages. So that it could be used on-site with potential customers, the solution would have to provide access to data anytime, anywhere, and from an array of mobile devices. Jason Fox, Mobile Application Architect at 3M, upped the ante by volunteering to deliver the new app in one weekend. For Fox and his team, these requirements meant turning to the cloud instead of an on-premises datacenter. “My first thought was to go directly to the cloud because we needed to provide access not only to our salespeople, but to resellers who didn’t have access to our internal network,” says Fox. “The cloud just seemed like a logical choice.”
