Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/771645
M y daughter and her family recently ran into some bad luck, and were forced to move back home. e plant where my son-in-law was working burned down, and as a result he lost his employment. ey kept spending, despite the lack of income. Aer several months they could no longer make ends meet and were forced to do something different. at meant swallowing their pride, and moving back home. I must say things are a little noisier around the house now, but I do enjoy getting to play with my 2-year-old granddaughter more. Before we let them move back in, we laid out some ground rules. We wanted this to be a positive change, and not an opportunity for them to escape their problems. It has been hard for them to adjust their lives to avoid previous behaviors. We can tell it is difficult, but applaud their efforts. We oen find ourselves in a position we don't like, and need things to change. Too oen we want to wait out our problems, and see if they will fix themselves. We reason that is almost worked last time, or that the effort to make the change will be great, so want to avoid the effort. I think this is a definition of crazy; to do the same thing again, and again and expect a different result. About a year ago we started analyzing how we run the systems that support Truckstop.com. We realized that we could not expect our systems to get more reliable without some major changes. We could not maintain our old systems and processes and expect things to get better. Many changes were needed. Some have been easier to do, and we are seeing the benefits of those already. Some are much larger, and will require close to a full rewrite of Truckstop.com to make work. When Truckstop was just starting out, and our customer base was smaller. We would get calls reporting bugs on the site, and the developer would make adjustments directly to the site. is was a quick way to get the updates done, but caused problems about as oen as it fixed them. Today the change management process is much more robust. Updates are tested at many levels, and verified to not break other areas of the site. Updates are only rolled into production aer hours, and when testing has confirmed no visible issues. We also looked at our back end systems and how these would support the growing requirements of our service portfolio, and increasing customer base. We realized our old way of building servers to support our services was inefficient, and could not support the growth. We also realized that it made sense to bring in a partner to help manage the server farms. We have been working with Amazon Web Services for a little over a year to automate server deployment and management. We are seeing some efficiency improvements from this move, too. As the Truckstop product offering has grown, and our customer base has followed suit, we have had to adjust. Gone are the days of developers making hot fixes to the Truckstop.com web site. We no longer treat our servers like pets, and try to keep them around. Servers are now anonymous, and rebuilt through automation when they have issues. Truckstop.com is not stagnant. We continue to update our products, and think you will appreciate the improvements. TECH TALK Chip Olsen is the Manager of Tech Operations for Truckstop.com. Chip graduated from Utah State University with a degree in Computer Science. He also has over 20 years of IT experience. BY CHIP OLSEN, MANAGER OF TECH OPERATIONS, TRUCKSTOP.COM Keeping Up with the Times WE OFTEN FIND OURSELVES IN A POSITION WE DON'T LIKE, AND NEED THINGS TO CHANGE. TOO OFTEN WE WANT TO WAIT OUT OUR PROBLEMS, AND SEE IF THEY WILL FIX THEMSELVES." " 24 IT MAGA ZINE V o l . 1 1 , N o . 1