Call it the Logistics Cloud.
It’s cloud-computing technology for logistics service providers, or LSPs, and it’s a huge universe that encompasses every industry. It’s computing that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet and employs a network of remote servers to store, manage and process data rather than a local server.
It’s flexible: A user can obtain as much service as needed at any given time. It’s sold on demand, usually by the hour or minute. It’s fully managed by the cloud provider. It can be a public cloud, which sells services to anyone on the Internet such as Amazon Web Services. Or a private cloud, a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of customers.
There is some hesitation among LSPs to move to the cloud because they worry they will lose control of what they deliver to customers and that the cloud is less safe and secure than their own operations. The truth is, the cloud can be more secure because, especially with a private cloud provider such as SunGard Availability Services, more security officials including a chief security officer are monitoring operations constantly using state of the art tools.