This was a busy morning for my team. Mark was up a bit before midnight to do security updates in the PCI environment. Scot was up at 4:30 moving customers to newer, faster servers running the latest version of Oracle. I met Grant at the Hosting Facility at 6:30 to install a new server, decommission two older ones, and to meet the EMC engineer to install more drives in the SAN.
It was a busy morning, but we don't mind. That's what we do. We want our customers to be able to focus on managing their hosted PARCS solution and running their parking operations, not have their servers compete for attention. So if early mornings make our sophisticated parking software perform just a little bit better, if they make parking management just a little easier, it is all well worth it.
Happy parking.
Jim
This week I set a new personal record for the ratio of time-in-a-plane to time-on-the-ground. I spent about 9 hours on Tuesday flying to/from Arizona to hang out with the good folks at the Southwest Parking Association for about 5 hours. I landed just in time to hear Liliana Rambo give the keynote address. She talked about her initiatives with High Performing Teams as she works with the three Houston-area airports and her experiences with City Parking Solutions in Miami and Houston.
After a great lunch with a table full of folks from Arizona State University ( a T2 Flex customer that uses our Hosted solution ), I was privileged to have the opportunity to give my presentation "Parking in the Cloud - Practical Benefits of a Hosted Parking Solution".
There are so many good reasons for moving to a hosted Parking Enforcement System or Parking Access and Revenue Control System. Hosting with a good partner provides increased uptime, headache-free access to data, huge cost savings, and much, much more.
But that's all I've got room for here. If you want to hear more, I guess you'll just have to catch me at my next speaking engagement.
There are so many good reasons for moving to a hosted Parking Enforcement System or Parking Access and Revenue Control System. Hosting with a good partner provides increased uptime, headache-free access to data, huge cost savings, and much, much more.
But that's all I've got room for here. If you want to hear more, I guess you'll just have to catch me at my next speaking engagement.
Happy parking!
Jim
Recently, I got a question from a customer about PCI – one of the many that I answer on a regular basis - and it caused me to pause and think about what PCI means for T2 and our customers. One of the things I'm very proud of about the T2 Systems Hosted Parking Solution is that we're a PCI-DSS Level 1 Service Provider. That said, PCI is a *pain*. It is a really big pain to become a Level 1 Service Provider. It is expensive. It is time-consuming. It is difficult. So why do we do it? So our customers will have Parking Access and Revenue Control systems, parking permit and enforcement systems and eBusiness solutions that require a lot less work on their part to become PCI compliant. We're already hard at work on meeting all of the compliance standards of PCI 2.0. It is better that we do the work once, for all of our Hosted customers, than require that each one go through the process on their own.
Most PARCS solutions are validated to PA DSS 1.x. Like T2, they're working on PCI 2.0. The key difference is that the PCI 2.0 compliant version of T2 Flex comes as part of the customers’ subscription at no additional cost. And the substantial hardware upgrades for the server environment, which can cost tens of thousands, are taken care of by T2 as part of our hosting. And no expensive upgrades to peripheral devices like fee computers are required.
Lower cost and less work are always good.
T2's Hosting Environment includes a dedicated PCI Card Processing environment, and it is T2 that does the upgrade work to the hardware and software as all of the compliance work for PCI. For all of the pain that PCI complian
ce induces, it is intended to protect merchants and cardholders from many of the modern dangers associated with credit cards.
Security is important. Our focus on security makes it easier for our customers to focus on their parking operations.
I just passed my four-year mark working in parking. After nearly nineteen years in banking, it took me a while to really understand. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a long, long way from being prepared to sit for the CAPP test, but I think I can honestly say "I get it" when taking about Parking Access and Revenue Control, Parking Garage Software, Handheld Ticket Writers, and a lot of what goes into managing them.
For me, all that complexity translates back to computing systems that talk to all of those advanced parking solutions that are out there in the world dealing with all of the parkers. Even in the summer when many of T2's customers that use our software as a campus parking solution are at a relatively low volume of parkers, we're seeing around 20,000 transactions a day amounting to around a million dollars and that's just for our customers that use our hosted parking system software. A similar number run their own computer systems running T2's parking software.
Each of those transactions generated has a "footprint" on the servers that we use to host. They translate to memory usage, CPU usage, and disk reads/writes. As a geek and a numbers guy, it is absolutely fascinating to watch the metrics as the complex transactions are processed and completed. The main reason we monitor everything that goes on in our Hosting Environment so that we can make sure there's enough hardware to support all of our customers efficiently and well, but I still think all of those metrics are just plain cool.
Happy Parking.
For me, all that complexity translates back to computing systems that talk to all of those advanced parking solutions that are out there in the world dealing with all of the parkers. Even in the summer when many of T2's customers that use our software as a campus parking solution are at a relatively low volume of parkers, we're seeing around 20,000 transactions a day amounting to around a million dollars and that's just for our customers that use our hosted parking system software. A similar number run their own computer systems running T2's parking software.
Each of those transactions generated has a "footprint" on the servers that we use to host. They translate to memory usage, CPU usage, and disk reads/writes. As a geek and a numbers guy, it is absolutely fascinating to watch the metrics as the complex transactions are processed and completed. The main reason we monitor everything that goes on in our Hosting Environment so that we can make sure there's enough hardware to support all of our customers efficiently and well, but I still think all of those metrics are just plain cool.
Happy Parking.
So I was one of those folks that stood in line to buy an iPad 2. I've never been one to do that kind of thing, but this thing just looked cool to me. It is cooler than I ever expected. It has changed the way I access the online world. That got me thinking...
How many of the consumers that are accessing the parker side of T2's enterprise parking management software are using mobile devices? We took a quick and informal look at our the logs from the parker portion of our parking enforcement system and saw that a whopping 17% of our activity was coming from mobile browsers like iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. That's a lot of people buying permits, paying parking citations, and generally doing business far, far away from a desk.
If parkers can pay citations before they even pull out of the parking space where they were cited, that's a lot less Parking Citation Collections to worry about. In some cases, it means that citations are going from Handheld Ticket Writers to completed payments in a matter of minutes.
I'm going to keep watching the logs. I want to see how this changes over time. Happy parking.
How many of the consumers that are accessing the parker side of T2's enterprise parking management software are using mobile devices? We took a quick and informal look at our the logs from the parker portion of our parking enforcement system and saw that a whopping 17% of our activity was coming from mobile browsers like iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. That's a lot of people buying permits, paying parking citations, and generally doing business far, far away from a desk.
If parkers can pay citations before they even pull out of the parking space where they were cited, that's a lot less Parking Citation Collections to worry about. In some cases, it means that citations are going from Handheld Ticket Writers to completed payments in a matter of minutes.
I'm going to keep watching the logs. I want to see how this changes over time. Happy parking.
Working with Advanced Parking Solutions every day can change your perspective. I've been with T2 Systems for almost four years now and the time has just flown by. This week we were having a technical discussion about some possible enhancements to the features in the eBusiness (parker-facing) portion of T2's suite of Parking System Software and it reminded me of my first day at T2.
On my first day at T2, I got the first and only parking ticket of my life. Yeah, that's what I said. I'd never gotten a parking ticket before being hired at T2 and I haven't gotten one since. That's probably a combination of me being a conformist detail-oriented rule-follower, and living in the suburbs where there just isn't a lot of parking enforcement going on. There aren't exactly a lot of parking garages in my neighborhood.
For the record, I totally deserved the parking ticket. I parked in a two-hour zone and got stuck for a lot longer than I expected. I didn't make it back to my car for almost four hours. The parking ticket was a whopping $10. Thinking back on that now, I'm surprised how old-school the ticket was. It wasn't produced using an electronic handheld ticket writer. It was pen on two-part-carbonless paper. No parking ticket computer for them. Pure no-tech.
The really frustrating part was that the city parking solution was entirely manual. Not just the ticket writing. The whole darn thing. I had to pay $10 in cash ONLY and I had to pay it in person within 7 days. Oh, and the parking office was already closed for the day. If only they had given me a way to pay online, I'd have done it right then and there. I'd even have paid a few extra bucks to save the extra trip back to pay the fine.
At the end of the day, it just goes to show that there are a lot more places than need good parking enforcement systems and that following the rules works well for me.
On my first day at T2, I got the first and only parking ticket of my life. Yeah, that's what I said. I'd never gotten a parking ticket before being hired at T2 and I haven't gotten one since. That's probably a combination of me being a conformist detail-oriented rule-follower, and living in the suburbs where there just isn't a lot of parking enforcement going on. There aren't exactly a lot of parking garages in my neighborhood.
For the record, I totally deserved the parking ticket. I parked in a two-hour zone and got stuck for a lot longer than I expected. I didn't make it back to my car for almost four hours. The parking ticket was a whopping $10. Thinking back on that now, I'm surprised how old-school the ticket was. It wasn't produced using an electronic handheld ticket writer. It was pen on two-part-carbonless paper. No parking ticket computer for them. Pure no-tech.
The really frustrating part was that the city parking solution was entirely manual. Not just the ticket writing. The whole darn thing. I had to pay $10 in cash ONLY and I had to pay it in person within 7 days. Oh, and the parking office was already closed for the day. If only they had given me a way to pay online, I'd have done it right then and there. I'd even have paid a few extra bucks to save the extra trip back to pay the fine.
At the end of the day, it just goes to show that there are a lot more places than need good parking enforcement systems and that following the rules works well for me.
Recently I was talking the manager of the company that cleans our office building about facility security to insure that they were following all appropriate security procedures in our space. During that discussion, he told me a story about one of their employees that had a very bad day. The cleaning company has a company-wide policy against propping open doors (even for just a minute). This policy exists to protect their clients as well as their employees. One of their employees didn't follow that policy one night. He had a bunch of boxes to carry out to the dumpster and wanted to do it as quickly as possible. With all of the best intentions, he propped open the door figuring that it would only be for a few minutes. Unfortunately for him, some "bad guys" saw him do that. While he was inside getting a load of boxes, they came in, beat him badly enough to subdue him, and then stole a bunch of computers from the office he was cleaning. Fortunately he fully recovered physically. Unfortunately, his company had to fire him that same day for violating security policies and causing the cleaning company’s client to be victimized because of that violation. Double ouch.
So what does that have to do with Parking, Parking System Software, and Parking Access and Revenue Control? It is all about balancing security with convenience and expediency. Lots of parking facilities accept credit cards. If you take credit cards, you’re subject to PCI compliance rules. Much like the unfortunate employee in the cleaning crew, if you take shortcuts that compromise security, your parking facility could face some rather severe consequences. A parking lot can't be beat up or fired, but your bank could take away your ability to accept credit cards, you could be subject to fines and even huge civil penalties resulting from a credit-card related security breach. When an important or valued customer asks you to "just keep their credit card on file" or emails you their credit card information, it is tempting (and often good customer service) to just do what they ask. Unfortunately, like our ill-fated cleaner, doing that can get you in a lot of trouble.
The key is finding a way to balance good service and following good security practices. Unfortunately, security and convenience are inversely related. It is a heck of a lot more convenient to leave your home unlocked rather than fumble with keys when you come home in the dark with your arms full of groceries, kids, or both, but most of us don’t do that. We lock our homes (and often arm alarm systems) because we want and need to take reasonable precautions to keep our homes safe.
T2 Systems has recently completed our PCI-DSS Assessment to become a Service Provider. As a result of that project, we have been listed on the Visa Global List of PCI DSS Validated Service Providers (http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/cisp-list-of-pcidss-compliant-service-providers.pdf). This is a long, complicated, expensive process, but it was well worth it for us and for our customers. By T2 being a PCI-DSS Service Provider, our Advanced Parking Solutions customers have a lot less PCI-related work ahead of them by using the integrated Parking Payment Systems within our products. Our customers still can’t keep credit card numbers on post-it notes, but they have a whole lot less computer system work to do. Regardless of whether or not you are a T2 Systems customer, diligence with credit cards is critical. Credit card breaches typically don’t result in physical beatings, but if you have to deal with a breach, you may almost envy the guy that was only beat up and fired.
So what does that have to do with Parking, Parking System Software, and Parking Access and Revenue Control? It is all about balancing security with convenience and expediency. Lots of parking facilities accept credit cards. If you take credit cards, you’re subject to PCI compliance rules. Much like the unfortunate employee in the cleaning crew, if you take shortcuts that compromise security, your parking facility could face some rather severe consequences. A parking lot can't be beat up or fired, but your bank could take away your ability to accept credit cards, you could be subject to fines and even huge civil penalties resulting from a credit-card related security breach. When an important or valued customer asks you to "just keep their credit card on file" or emails you their credit card information, it is tempting (and often good customer service) to just do what they ask. Unfortunately, like our ill-fated cleaner, doing that can get you in a lot of trouble.
The key is finding a way to balance good service and following good security practices. Unfortunately, security and convenience are inversely related. It is a heck of a lot more convenient to leave your home unlocked rather than fumble with keys when you come home in the dark with your arms full of groceries, kids, or both, but most of us don’t do that. We lock our homes (and often arm alarm systems) because we want and need to take reasonable precautions to keep our homes safe.
T2 Systems has recently completed our PCI-DSS Assessment to become a Service Provider. As a result of that project, we have been listed on the Visa Global List of PCI DSS Validated Service Providers (http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/cisp-list-of-pcidss-compliant-service-providers.pdf). This is a long, complicated, expensive process, but it was well worth it for us and for our customers. By T2 being a PCI-DSS Service Provider, our Advanced Parking Solutions customers have a lot less PCI-related work ahead of them by using the integrated Parking Payment Systems within our products. Our customers still can’t keep credit card numbers on post-it notes, but they have a whole lot less computer system work to do. Regardless of whether or not you are a T2 Systems customer, diligence with credit cards is critical. Credit card breaches typically don’t result in physical beatings, but if you have to deal with a breach, you may almost envy the guy that was only beat up and fired.
In my last blog entry, I said I thought I should stick to what I know (technology) and not dive too deeply into the industry side of parking that many people know so much better. I'll be keeping that in mind again today. So last month I went to the IPI (International Parking Institute) Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. This was my second IPI (after a bit over three years working in the technology side of the parking industry).
After seeing everything there, I have to say that I'm proud to work for T2. I knew we had some pretty cool stuff (end of shameless plug), but it really hit home how much T2 stood out in that room. Don't get me wrong. I'm not slamming anybody. I'm just so accustomed to thinking about technology meaning servers and terabytes of storage and hosting an Advanced Parking Solution. That makes it easy to forget that a lot of the industry has nothing to do with computers and that technology in parking often has nothing to do with computers.
T2 sells Parking Garage Software, Parking Citation Collections, Campus Parking Solutions, Handheld Ticket Writers and a whole lot more cool parking Technology. That's all cool stuff and I love working with it, but how cool is it to sell a giant ice melting machine that you can drive around. I may have lots of cool servers with a bunch of cool blinking lights, but I can't push a button to melt a bunch of snow off of a parking lot. That's got to be a lot more fun than making something go away with the delete key. Most interesting to me was all of the technology in that melting machine. It (and a few other booths) made me realize that lots of parking technology has to do with fuel efficiency and reliability without having even one server. That said, I think the melter had a few blinking lights so it still made me smile.
Happy Parking!
After seeing everything there, I have to say that I'm proud to work for T2. I knew we had some pretty cool stuff (end of shameless plug), but it really hit home how much T2 stood out in that room. Don't get me wrong. I'm not slamming anybody. I'm just so accustomed to thinking about technology meaning servers and terabytes of storage and hosting an Advanced Parking Solution. That makes it easy to forget that a lot of the industry has nothing to do with computers and that technology in parking often has nothing to do with computers.
T2 sells Parking Garage Software, Parking Citation Collections, Campus Parking Solutions, Handheld Ticket Writers and a whole lot more cool parking Technology. That's all cool stuff and I love working with it, but how cool is it to sell a giant ice melting machine that you can drive around. I may have lots of cool servers with a bunch of cool blinking lights, but I can't push a button to melt a bunch of snow off of a parking lot. That's got to be a lot more fun than making something go away with the delete key. Most interesting to me was all of the technology in that melting machine. It (and a few other booths) made me realize that lots of parking technology has to do with fuel efficiency and reliability without having even one server. That said, I think the melter had a few blinking lights so it still made me smile.
Happy Parking!
Last month I wrote about all of the data in the T2 Systems Hosting Environment. Since then we've added three more customers and almost two hundred million rows of data. Talk about a growing Parking Management System.
After writing my last Blog entry I realized that I should probably stick to what I know. Technology. T2 Systems' Parking Solutions are just the reason I get to play with really cool stuff. I'm a geek. I like working with things that have lots of blinking lights and lots of acronyms. The guys on my team are geeks too. One of them will only admit to being a geek from 8-to-5. I don't believe it. I've seen his Facebook posts.
This month we're working on upgrading the part of our hosting environment that hosts the T2 Flex Web Servers. We've moving to the recently release Windows Server 2008 R2 for our Hyper-V hosts, adding more storage to our SAN, and implementing a new clustered file system that allows wicked-fast migration of virtual servers (yeah, wicked-fast is a technical term). We're also switching another rack of servers to 208 Volt Power.
So what does all that mean (other than fun for me and my fellow geeks)? It means more capacity, and more speed for T2 Systems' Parking Management System and more blinking lights for me.
Happy Parking!
After writing my last Blog entry I realized that I should probably stick to what I know. Technology. T2 Systems' Parking Solutions are just the reason I get to play with really cool stuff. I'm a geek. I like working with things that have lots of blinking lights and lots of acronyms. The guys on my team are geeks too. One of them will only admit to being a geek from 8-to-5. I don't believe it. I've seen his Facebook posts.
This month we're working on upgrading the part of our hosting environment that hosts the T2 Flex Web Servers. We've moving to the recently release Windows Server 2008 R2 for our Hyper-V hosts, adding more storage to our SAN, and implementing a new clustered file system that allows wicked-fast migration of virtual servers (yeah, wicked-fast is a technical term). We're also switching another rack of servers to 208 Volt Power.
So what does all that mean (other than fun for me and my fellow geeks)? It means more capacity, and more speed for T2 Systems' Parking Management System and more blinking lights for me.
Happy Parking!
So when I first joined T2 systems nearly three years ago, I knew very little about parking or parking management systems. My only real exposure was as a parker on a college campus. And even with that, my experience with the Campus Parking Solution was only in the form of paying for my permit once a year.
So here I am running a data center full of Software for Parking. Just three years ago we had only a few dozen hosted customers. As of this week we're up to 135 and we're using all sorts of cool technology to keep all of these advanced parking solutions running well.
Just last week we passed the 1.3 BILLION record mark in our production databases. Three years ago I would never have guessed that parking software could generate that much data this quickly. It has been a fun experience growing this environment.
Keep those parkers parking. We've got plenty of room for billions and billions more rows. Maybe we need to invest in a sign that says "billions and billions parked". Hmmmm...
Having worked for a banking technology company for nearly 19 years, I'm relatively new to the parking industry. Since Joining T2 Systems in 2007, my eyes have opened to the complexity and scale of modern parking. That said, one thing still baffles me. Why are there still so many facilities that don't accept credit cards? Don't get me wrong. I understand how hard it is to take credit cards when you're standing in a grass field that usually isn't used for parking. There are Parking Management Solutions for that (and T2 has one), but I'm not talking about grass fields. I'm talking about taking credit cards at parking facilities. Permanent lots or structures that already have gate arms and cashier booths.
A few years ago I got trapped (OK, so I wasn't trapped -- my car was) in an unattended garage because the paper currency acceptor was broken and I didn't have enough quarters in my pocket for an evening at an 80's video game arcade. I walked nearly a mile to get change. Not cool. More recently, I was parked in a downtown garage and found that I needed $20 in cash to exit. When parking is a buck or two for the day, I understand cash only, but $20 is a lot more then I spend on lunch and I always charge that.
Credit cards aren't the future. They're the present. Accepting credit cards doesn't have to be a pain. They can often be deployed as an extension to the Parking Permit Software and Garage Parking Solutions that you already have in place. T2 Flex has modules that handle credit cards as part of a total Parking Access and Revenue Control system. Accepting credit cards can lower costs for a facility, reduce involuntary profit sharing, and can make it parkers happier (or at least less frustrated).
As a part of the T2 Systems team, it isn't hard to guess that I have a bias for our solutions, but in writing this I'm also speaking as somebody that parks in these facilities. Nobody likes paying for parking (me included), but the less painful it is to pay, the better an experience parkers will have, and the more likely they are to come back to the same facility. I can assure you that's I know exactly which garage I got stuck in.
Happy parking.
A few years ago I got trapped (OK, so I wasn't trapped -- my car was) in an unattended garage because the paper currency acceptor was broken and I didn't have enough quarters in my pocket for an evening at an 80's video game arcade. I walked nearly a mile to get change. Not cool. More recently, I was parked in a downtown garage and found that I needed $20 in cash to exit. When parking is a buck or two for the day, I understand cash only, but $20 is a lot more then I spend on lunch and I always charge that.
Credit cards aren't the future. They're the present. Accepting credit cards doesn't have to be a pain. They can often be deployed as an extension to the Parking Permit Software and Garage Parking Solutions that you already have in place. T2 Flex has modules that handle credit cards as part of a total Parking Access and Revenue Control system. Accepting credit cards can lower costs for a facility, reduce involuntary profit sharing, and can make it parkers happier (or at least less frustrated).
As a part of the T2 Systems team, it isn't hard to guess that I have a bias for our solutions, but in writing this I'm also speaking as somebody that parks in these facilities. Nobody likes paying for parking (me included), but the less painful it is to pay, the better an experience parkers will have, and the more likely they are to come back to the same facility. I can assure you that's I know exactly which garage I got stuck in.
Happy parking.
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