Europe's most successful Software as a Service (SaaS) offering for the transport and logistics industry took another big step forward with the signing of four transport companies to the CarrierNetOnline (CNO) on-line transport management system (www.carriernet.co.uk ).
The latest companies to join the on-demand service are TH Express of Milton Keynes; News Transport, also of Milton Keynes; Steve Prince of Braintree; and Cargo Line of Daventry.
In 2006, there were 1000 users of CNO in the United Kingdom, including CNO members, their customers, and suppliers. More than one million orders were processed and the value of orders moved was approximately $1 billion.
The Chief Executive of CarrierNetOnline, Piyush Shah, believes that the advantages of Software as a Service, compared to traditional server based solutions, are enormous. "There is no need for investment in software licences, hardware, support, maintenance, and upgrades. Installation is days rather than months and upgrades and enhancements are free – and happen automatically rather than having to disrupt business for a new version installation," Mr Shah said.
The SaaS or On-Demand model means that users pay on a transaction basis and pay only for those features they use. "The power of CNO would be beyond the budget of almost all transport operators if they bought a licence for traditional software or – even worse- tried to develop it themselves," Mr Shah added. "This model truly allows even small operators to compete on the quality of their IT capability and also enables large operators to upgrade their systems without massive developments costs and disruption of the business.