railSTACK. ONBOARD CLOUD DATA CENTER
Maximizing your investment in onboard hardware. Edge-based hosting with all benefits of the Cloud
Over the past three years PaxLife has developed railSTACK, a fully functional Edge-based Cloud platform for transportation such as rail, bus and air. railSTACK content is updated via so-called data showers at key railway stations and other network nodes (like terminus stops), through which large amounts of data are transferred in a very short period of time.
railSTACK is Cloud-provider-independent, open to any Third Party application, and remains under full operator control to deploy software without any additional integration needed – like deploying an app from an app shop to a smartphone.
The respective railSTACK user retains complete data sovereignty, i.e. it does not have to share the data with AWS, Google or others. Different service providers can simultaneously and independently of each other create additional “value-added” services under their own data sovereignty and offer them to the transport company.
railSTACK, Benefits at a glance
Maximize Data Throughput
railSTACK collects and securely synchronizes significant amounts of data (up to 1 TByte per day) in both directions between the on-board train systems and the Cloud, no matter which route the vehicle takes.
Cloud Edge Hosting
Instead of hosting all the data in one centralized cloud, railSTACK relies on a distributed computing infrastructure, bringing data storage, computation and, in fact, your private Cloud hosting to the vehicle. This results in shorter response time for the users, lower bandwidth usage, and mitigates the risk of connection issues.
100% Data Control
Data exchanges are safe and secure. There is no involuntary data sharing with Cloud operators, unless operators choose to do so. In fact, railSTACK can be hosted on any private Cloud.
Seamless Integration
With electronic services and “apps” (or, in fact, any operator or Third Party software) hosted in the vehicle (see above), railSTACK is designed to continuously integrate and deploy updates that operators have decided to distribute to their fleet.
Hardware Agnostic
Full hardware abstraction means one software version for any variety of different hardware in your onboard fleet today.