It’s 2024 … ‘the cloud’ is everywhere, and no, we are not talking about the clouds in the sky…

We quite often get asked ‘what is cloud-based parking management’, ‘why are companies hosting their, and their users, data on it?’ and ‘why does Frogparking host the data our system collects from our customer’s parking facilities on it?’

Well firstly, cloud-based parking management is a simple example of cost certainty.

Cloud storage is flexible and is able to be tailored to your requirements. There is no hardware to purchase, no storage to physically host onsite, and no capital used to purchase server equipment. Furthermore, you can easily modify capacity 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’s not good sense to purchase an entire aircraft (let alone fly it). That’s before you get to landing fees, fuel costs, and so on. You get the gist right? Instead, we jump online, add travel preferences, and get to purchasing seats. Airlines have the skilled resources to spread these costs across many passengers, making air travel more affordable.

In the above example, the airline are cloud-based storage suppliers (such as Amazon or Microsoft). Further, the aircraft is the server capacity these companies have around the world to host data.  Lastly, the ‘plane ride’ is the data gathered from your Frogparking parking management solution.

To continue this metaphor, there are no additional or surprise costs. Think of fuel (power), landing charges (civil works for the server), or accidentally buying an extra seat on the flight (save space locally by ditching your onsite server room).

We charge one annual price for data hosting. Additionally, this includes remote maintenance on the server, access to FrogHub, and remote monitoring and optimization from our engineers. It’s as easy as that – no hidden costs, giving you full visibility and certainty of your annual costs.

You’re always up to date

Bear with us on the airline metaphor for just one more point. Before flying, you know that you’re flying on a safe, well-maintained Boeing or Airbus in the fleet, right?

When it comes to maintenance and keeping your system up for over 99% of the time, cloud-based is where it is at. Cloud-based parking software gives Frogparking a few key advantages over physical servers.

Importantly, it allows us to pull the ‘aircraft into the hangar’ from time-to-time. On account of this, Frogparking guarantees the latest and greatest parking software. We constantly improve performance, or get better fuel efficiency (faster data transfer). It also means Frogparking has telemetry options. Accordingly, this tells us when maintenance is required on engines (parking guidance sensors), wings (communications gateways), or landing gear (signage and guidance lights).

Parking 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 parking management system, we can roll out the latest and greatest upgrade in the blink of an eye. Thus, reducing the need to call out a technician to visit the site & saving you money.

Data security

No metaphors are required for this part of the article. The subject of data security is serious. Cloud-based parking software is uniquely positioned to provide parking 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 can pull your data from any of these locations. Therefore, if a server ‘goes down’ in one location, your parking data is safe at another. Furthermore, it can be accessed and added to – something which our server does automatically.

Contrast this to an onsite server, where data is only hosted on one, physical hard drive (essentially a larger version of the hard drive in your desktop PC or laptop). For example, if you experience a temporary power cut onsite, not only is your server down, but you may experience a loss in data and, in all likelihood, a technician will need to be called out to restore your server.

Secondly, cyber-attacks are a real and credible threat to any operator of connected hardware and software – especially as the parking IoT future has arrived.

Unfortunately, it’s also in the news with great frequency. The victims of attacks always say things like “we never thought this would happen to us/our business”. Similarly, “we are involved in the such-and-such industry, we didn’t think we’d attract the attention of such an attack”.

We aren’t claiming cloud-based parking management solutions are immune to such attacks. However, 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. Equally, whose business model relies on having policies and protections in place.

Is cloud-based common?

Cloud-based parking 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 parking 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.