Parking - March 2010 - 12

Tech Talk Blake Laufer Revenge of the Nerds (Part 1 of 2) Revenge of the Nerds was a very campy 1984 movie where the downtrodden and oppressed “Nerds” overcame adversity by beating the “Jocks” and winning social acceptance. It’s a rags-to-riches story about computer geeks, sort of like how uber-nerd Bill Gates became the world’s richest man. Who knew that those early oddball and misfit Nerds would evolve into today’s Information Technology (IT) professionals—and that you’d be completely at their mercy? And what does any of this have to do with parking? Let me explain. Recently I attended a presentation on access and revenue control systems. This is a relatively common presentation in our industry. It was a good, vendor-neutral PowerPoint. But what was intriguing to me was that one section of the presentation was dedicated to working with your IT staff. Parking never used to be the domain of IT staff. How did this happen—did I miss a memo? To answer this question we must first flash back to the end of the last decade(s) of the last millennium. At that time most ARC systems were made up of three parts: a desktop computer in the office, some equipment in the field, and some wiring—serial cables—connecting them all together. Ah, yes, it was a simpler time back then. When you purchased your ARC system it came as a package, and you didn’t need the Nerds to do anything at all, except perhaps pull a couple of wires between the office and the lanes while they argue over whether Captain Kirk was better than Captain Picard. Gradually things changed. The first thing that changed was the computer in the office. Instead of a simple PC, you suddenly needed a server, at four times the price. Mission critical operations like parking need mission critical servers. And according to the IT folks, to “do things right” you might need two servers: one for the management system and another for the database. And servers require maintenance, don’tcha know? Things like operating system patches and virus checkers and backup agents and redundant arrays of allegedly inexpensive disk drives. The parking operation has neither the time, inclination nor the knowledge to manage these servers, so we seek the help of our IT departments. That was the start. The next thing that changed was the wiring. Instead of “simple” serial communications, a computer network became the standard. Serial communications in most other industries were abandoned many years ago, but parking hung on until the end. Admittedly the use of a network provides far more advantage than using simple serial cables—we want video in the lanes and intercom systems and so forth. A standard network today uses TCP/IP (the lingua franca of the Internet), so it’s very reliable and standardized and handles video and voice. In addition, a network offers the ability to National Parking Association PARKING March 2010

Parking - March 2010

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