Cloud Transportation Software for Routing and Smart City Planning

Business challenge

Our client is a German provider of world-class supply chain and logistics technology that optimize the movement of passengers and products. Their current transportation solutions were based on diverse technologies, and they manually set up solutions on customers’ premises. However, this posed challenges in terms of maintenance and updates.

To overcome these challenges, our client decided to develop a cloud platform on which they could deploy their innovative cloud transportation software using a standardized set of tools and infrastructure instead of maintaining different technology stacks for different products and services. This cloud transportation software would help them reduce setup and maintenance costs while giving their customers a unified way to find, learn about, consume, and pay for cloud services.

Our client looked for an experienced partner to consult with about building a large-scale cloud platform from scratch using the cloud in transportation planning. This platform needed to support the migration of existing cloud transportation technologies and facilitate the development of new services.

Having developed and scaled a location data platform for one of our biggest clients, we were able to offer expertise in Cloud Development and DevOps practices along with the knowledge required to consult on all aspects of platform development at scale and IoT for smart cities.

Cloud transportation software delivered

We have supported our client in moving their core business to the cloud with the microservices software development. Working closely with our client, we designed a detailed roadmap and planned a series of workshops in which Intellias specialists could share knowledge of cloud transportation platform development and our client’s specialists could share functionality that needed to be migrated to the platform.

Initially, our client decided to build a unified cloud transportation management platform based on MS Azure cloud services. Intellias DevOps consultants set up and configured a scalable and reliable cloud infrastructure with a set of readily available tools for running software as a service (SaaS) solutions and public APIs for managing them. After the platform infrastructure was up and running, we proceeded to migrating the client’s legacy monolithic apps and brand-new microservices apps to the cloud platform and refactoring them.

Solutions we’ve migrated to the cloud

The first solution we migrated was a truck routing service based on enriched map data. We also migrated a service for traffic modeling, route optimization, and smart city planning.

Truck routing service

This cloud transportation management service allows customers to smartly build truck routes based on maps enriched with real-world data collected from public sources, municipalities, and third-party providers. This includes data on tolls, low-emission zones, truck transit restrictions, and pedestrian and suburban areas. Customers receive up-to-date maps to plan routes considering working hours and costs of tolls, avoid areas with truck restrictions during particular hours, and find alternative ways of getting to the destination.

Smart city planning

The second transportation solution we migrated is a monolithic smart city application that simulates infrastructure development scenarios for municipalities. Customers can upload data and maps to create a 3D model of an area and simulate traffic considering the construction of a new building, bridge, or other object. This app allows city planners to reduce risks associated with construction-related traffic jams, plan repair works to minimize traffic disruptions, and adapt city infrastructure to citizens’ lifestyles and businesses’ needs.

As the next steps of this ongoing project, we plan to migrate the following solutions using the cloud in transportation planning:

• GIS tools to saturate maps with custom data for web based transportation management system
• A Mobility as a Service (MaaS) solution for renting rovers, scooters, bicycles, cars, etc.
• Public APIs for developing custom components (innovative transport systems, routing, rendering, traffic, etc.)
• Field force optimization tool to smartly plan routes for field
• Apps for truck drivers to monitor fuel consumption, driver behavior, and working hours

Business outcome

From day one, the Intellias team has contributed to building a cloud transportation management platform that enables our client to migrate their innovative trucking solutions to the cloud. The cloud based system is now ready, and we’ve already migrated several mission-critical services to it that are now running in production mode.

Having established an innovative SaaS platform, our client is now shifting to a new service model, targeting small businesses that previously were hard to reach with expensive on-premises setup and maintenance. Applying cloud transportation technologies, our client is able to decrease costs for setup and updates and offer subscription-based online services.

By adopting a microservices architecture, our client’s platform became flexible enough to unite many solutions in one place and make them available to a wide audience via a single gateway. The unified approach chosen for migrating existing products reduces maintenance costs and thus allows for more competitive pricing.

With our client’s new platform, customers can easily build truck routes using enriched map data collected from various sources. This permits transportation and logistics companies to ensure the reliability and safety of their services as well as transparent logistics system management.

Smart city planning based on 3D modeling and careful calculation of infrastructure scenarios will open new opportunities for urban mobility, refining the experience of urban residents and municipalities make bold predictions before starting construction of buildings and other objects.