Newsletter Archives | Managed I.T. Services

AddOns Newsletter – September, 2018

Calling All Ellipse Users! The Ellipse User Group Conference for 2018 will be held in Breckenridge, Colorado from October 7th-10th. Benefits of attending include: Training on Tips & Tricks Ellipse 9: Learning and Influencing the Roadmap Learning from other users best practice cases Building a network with other Ellipse North American users Join your peers from Cleveland Cliff’s, Orange County Transportation Authority, Cloud Peak Energy, Transit Authority of River City, LA Sanitation, Arch Coal, and more! Come to network, learn, share, and influence the future of Ellipse while enjoying the beautiful town of Breckenridge. Register and get more information on the event page here! Data Center Expansion AddOns is expanding our data center in 3Q of 2018! We are more than doubling the size of our server, storage and network capacity with a 100% Oracle solution. AddOns is working with partners, Lewan & Associates, Oracle, and Meta 7 to plan and deliver a successful upgrade. Once complete, AddOns customers can expect superior availability, serviceability, reliability and performance. Benefits of the new environment include: More flexibility for customers during maintenance windows. If ever needed, we will be able to move an entire customer environment into a secondary environment. Hardware and equipment can be worked on in the data center without having to [...]

April OptimizeNews – I.T. Insights from AddOns

The AddOns team attended the 5th Annual State of Good Repair Conference in Washington, DC March 9th and 10th. ABB’s John Wimmer spoke about the importance ISO 55000 had as input to the State of GoodRepair requirements and how good maintenance practices drive operational value. We also heard from the FTA Office of Budget and Policy on the resources available to transits such as templates for TAM plans, requirements for capital planning and inclusion of facilities. We heard experiences in building TAM Plans, gaining executive buy-in and setting up effective asset management organizations from speakers from UTA, Salt Lake City, and WMATA. Jeff Boothe, Principal Booth Transit Consulting, shared his point of view on the planned infrastructure budget currently under consideration in Washington DC and the fact that very little funding is allotted for bus transportation and his fear that the FTA may lose funding. He also commented on whether private public partnerships can work in public transportation without the FTA grants most transits rely on. Joe Calabrese, CEO of Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority shared his story of modernizing the Cleveland Bus System and Lou Cripps from RTD in Denver shared how he has been using metrics and data to improve condition based maintenance. KEY TAKEAWAYS: FTA Budget faces 20% cuts to public transit capital grants. Declining ridership due to [...]