Cloud service facilitates firm’s traffic management for taxis and trucks

These vehicles are equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and other equipment to allow real-time monitoring for traffic management so as to minimise fuel consumption and save transportation time.
Goragot Wongpaisarnsin, assistant general manager of Toyota Tsusho Electronics (Thailand), said a team of 16 people had been working on various solutions to tackle transport, logistics and other issues using the enormous amount of digital data now available.
To leverage this big data, the company relies on cloud computing services for a quick start while avoiding a big upfront capital expenditure on information-technology infrastructure.
He said there were a lot of business and other opportunities resulting from big data that could be applied to provide new solutions to transport, logistics, insurance, healthcare, retail, and other sectors.
For the automotive sector, he said, AWS’s cloud service is used to connect and monitor a fleet of 10,000 taxis on Bangkok roads as well as 50,000 trucks and buses in all 77 provinces.
The massive data generated by these vehicles is used for mapping and navigation planning software. For example, recent data shows that Sathorn Road is the most congested street in Bangkok, with a traffic peak at around 6pm on working days.
During the peak hours, the average speed of vehicles on Sathorn Road is only 3km/h.
Real-time traffic data is fed into a navigation planning system using an FM radio frequency to allow drivers to manage their route. The accuracy ratio is now about 70 per cent, while the system is currently operational under a licence agreement.
Besides navigation planning, big data can be used in telemetrics for the auto-insurance industry as GPS and sensors can be equipped to monitor drivers’ behaviour and obtain other data critical for the pricing of insurance policies.
Goragot said another interesting area was door-to-door people navigation, as sensors and smartphones can be used to detect the flow of people from offices to retail outlets such as restaurants, which can then develop real-time interactive marketing campaigns.
The vast amount of digital data can also be applied along with other Internet-connected devices.
According to AWS, its cloud computing services have become a US$13-billion-a-year (Bt465 billion) business with an annualised growth rate of 55 per cent over the past year.
The hyper-growth reflects the significant advantages of cloud services compared with on-premise IT infrastructure. Speed and agility are often cited as key factors encouraging enterprises of all sizes to consider shifting their IT capability to the cloud.
For enterprises as well as start-ups, they may need as little as 18 weeks to get promising business ideas to the market using cloud service while also benefiting from the absence of high capital investment.
Like electricity, users of cloud services are charged as they actually use the utility, so users enjoy both time and cost savings.