Ben has been involved with Intelligent Transport Systems, Traffic Technology and Urban Traffic Management Control for over 20 Years. In this time he has been responsible for solutions at national, regional and local levels. These include Transport and Traffic Management Systems, Flow and Congestion Detection, Traffic Signal Design, Bus and Taxi Priority. He has advised clients in both the public and private sectors on utilising technology to ease congestion and reducing carbon emissions. These clients include Tees Valley Unlimited, Newcastle City Council, Blackpool Council and Transport for London.

Ben will be responsible for developing Cloud Amber's offering and providing existing and new clients with advice and support to enhance their service offering.

"After so many years in the ITS industry, I am excited about joining a young, dynamic and innovative company. I share the teams vision for democratising of information as well as re-interpreting UTMC as unified transport management control. It is very important that we continue to strive at breaking down barriers, providing greater integration and intelligence to existing and new areas, systems and services." - Ben Dobson, Cloud Amber's newest member of the family.

"With Ben's experience and knowledge, we are all very confident he will settle in to the Cloud Amber family and culture quickly and immediately start making an unique and invaluable contribution to our customers, our product and our systems." - Richard Thurbin, Technical Director.

ENDS

Notes for Editors

Cloud Amber's products enable Traffic Managers to model, monitor and control the environmental effects of travel as well as reducing congestion to maximise the use of a limited road network, all using UTMC, RTIG, SIRI and other industry protocols.

For more information and images please contact:

Richard Thurbin, Technical Director, Mobile: +44 (0) 7917 704 145

Downloadable version - PDF 97KB

The team were obviously over the moon with the news and almost started popping the Champaign corks. Unfortunately there was a 'but', and a big one at that. The system needs to be installed, up, running, working and fully signed off in two weeks!

"Now we usually install, commission and sign off a system within six weeks from order", remarked Cloud Amber's Operations Director Mike Wells, "to have the system up and running in two weeks needed not only everything to go smoothly within our own deployment team, but also for Traffic Wales to provide the required IT support within days."

In an unprecedented timescale, Traffic Wales's IT had servers and systems in place within hours and Cloud Amber's team began the job of installing and commissioning the system immediately.

"After more than a few weekends, late nights and much midnight oil, the team pulled together and delivered the system on time, working and fully signed off. This was great achievement by all and a true example of how partnership can work between two parties aiming for a common goal." - Mike Wells, our slightly bleary eyed Operations Director.

Traffic Wales are responsible for all trunk roads (main A roads and motorways) throughout the whole of Wales. With a considerable network of their own, there are also obvious and important links with England's counterpart, the Highways Agency.

"The Traffic Wales contract represents a new stage in Cloud Amber's business development. As an established and highly regarded supplier of UTMC and ITS systems, our first national trunk road highways contract brings the company to a whole new level. Cloud Amber is no longer considered a risk to small or large government authorities, Cloud Amber continues to grow within the UK with strong financials, strong leadership and a highly innovative product." - Richard Thurbin, Cloud Amber's Technical Director

ENDS

Notes for Editors

Cloud Amber's products enable Traffic Managers to model, monitor and control the environmental effects of travel as well as reducing congestion to maximise the use of a limited road network, all using UTMC, RTIG, SIRI and other industry protocols.

For more information and images please contact:

            Richard Thurbin, Technical Director, Mobile: +44 (0) 7917 704 145

Downloadable version - PDF 101KB

• roadworks that might affect their journey, including an indication of how much disruption they are causing
• other travel disruptions, such as emergency road closures
• levels of congestion
• train times and real-time information on some bus routes
• events that may generate a lot of traffic, such as Hampton Court Flower Show and the Epsom Derby
• car park locations and capacity, including for certain sites the number of spaces available
• locations of bus stops and train stations
• bus and train departure times
• information displayed on the council's roadside information signs, such as warnings about congestion on key routes

The site also enables people to report traffic signal faults, with the facility to pin down the exact signal location on a map. The council is hoping to add the facility for reporting other kinds of faults, such as potholes.

Ian Lake, the council's Cabinet Member for Transport, said:
"We are very proud to be launching this new website which will help our residents and people visiting the county decide how and when to make their journeys. This will not only make travelling less stressful, but should also contribute to easing the congestion on roads, as people will have better information about disruption and jams to avoid. As time goes by we'll be looking to add new features and make improvements to provide Surrey residents with as much information as possible."

Mike Wells, Cloud Amber's Operational Director said:
"We are very proud to be helping Surrey County Council enhance their services to the public by providing our state of the art Voyager Travel Portal. We look forward to working very closely together, continuing to innovate and provide best value service we possibly can."

Visitors to the site are encouraged to give their views on the service by completing the on-line survey.

ENDS

Notes for Editors

Cloud Amber's products enable transport managers to model, monitor and control the environmental effects of travel as well as reducing congestion to maximise the use of a limited road network, all using UTMC, RTIG, SIRI and other industry protocols.

For more information and images please contact:

            Richard Thurbin, Technical Director, Mobile: +44 (0) 7917 704 145

Downloadable version - PDF 144KB

Building on our existing relationship, Bradford Metropolitan District Council has awarded Cloud Amber their recent tender for UTMC Variable Message System. Building on their existing Argonaut Common Database, four variable message signs and our innovative Journey Times Engine will be installed and commissioned, offering traffic engineers the ability to display journey times and inform the public about any expected delays.

"We are all overjoyed that our relationship with Bradford Highways continues to go from strength to strength. At Cloud Amber try our very best to deliver on our promises, this contract builds on all of our hard work and dedication over the last three years." - James Hewetson, Commercial Director.

Over the next few months, our Operations Team working very closely with our variable message sign partners Dambach, will be installing and commissioning four signs and the Journey Times Engine, with acceptance tests scheduled for early March 2010.

"With our second variable message sign contract under our belt, this firmly establishes Cloud Amber as a credible force within this section of the UTMC market and paves the way for more UTMC Common Database lead VMS tenders in the future." - Richard Thurbin, Technical Director.

Our second New Year cheer is from the West Country and Somerset County Council. Adding to our existing twenty two systems, this new country re-affirms Cloud Amber as the second largest UTMC supplier in the UK and continues to build on our strength and presence in the West of England.

For Somerset we shall be integrating their urban traffic control, automatic number plate recognition systems and providing our Arognaut Command and Control plus Voyager Travel Portal.

"In a lot of ways this inital small system was very similar to Bradford and will allow Somerset to build off and continually improve over the next months and years." - Mike Wells, Operations Director. 

ENDS

Notes for Editors

Cloud Amber's products enable Traffic Managers to model, monitor and control the environmental effects of travel as well as reducing congestion to maximise the use of a limited road network, all using UTMC, RTIG, SIRI and other industry protocols.

Current Cloud Amber Systems In Amber

For more information and images please contact:

            Richard Thurbin, Technical Director, Mobile: +44 (0) 7917 704 145

Downloadable version - PDF 188KB

The Journey

Looking back is something that comes quite unnatural to the Cloud Amber board. However we do remember our first contract was for a small Argonaut system in Bradford Metropolitan Borough Council. At the time the development team consisted of just one! After our success in Bradford, we secured further work, small jobs and contracts, gradually expanding our customer base and product set.

"The Dorset County Council project was our first large scale UTMC deployment. With over 7 or 8 adaptors, Strategy Manager, Argonaut Mobile, Document Manager, Filters, it provided us with a great challenge and really catapulted our product to being one of the best on the market." - James Hewetson, Commercial Director

Following on from our success in Dorset, more recently delivering Cambridgeshire County Council (to a very demanding customer) and then highly innovative Oxfordshire County Council system, with yet more innovative, complicated and demanding features.

"The Oxfordshire system is now being presented and talked about throughout the UTMC industry as an example of car park, variable message sign and journey time best practice and an example for others to follow." - Mike Wells, Operations Director

There have been other noticeable successes such as the South Yorkshire Intelligent Transport System Dissemination project. Cloud Amber was up against giants such as Mott MacDonalds, Telent and Logica, all multinational, multimillion pound corporations so the spot light was on us to deliver. We are pleased to report that the launch of the Travel South Yorkshire Get There Sooner portal has been a success and is currently being seen as the UK's best multi modal real time travel portal on the internet today.

"Now with over twenty three systems deployed in the field, from being the smallest UTMC supplier in the UK, we are now comfortably the second largest with ambitions to be the largest within the next year. " - Richard Thurbin, Technical Director

The Future

The global recession has hit the UK hard but Cloud Amber is in prime position. The board feel the key to Cloud Amber's future success is to continue to innovate within the transport sector, bring further products on to the market as well as further adapt and improve our existing product set.

"We are perusing a number of large scale sales leads. These include a regional bus scheduling package for the midlands and the north of England, a car park pre and post payment system, asset and fault management as well as products which reduce our customer's yearly revenue spend. " - James Hewetson, Commercial Director

"We are confident we have the team in the UK and abroad to achieve continued success and expansion throughout the coming years. Thank you to all of our team, supporters and customers for your part in making Cloud Amber the success it is today." - Richard Thurbin, Technical Director

Notes for Editors

Cloud Amber

1. Cloud Amber are committed to minimising the environmental impact of travel whilst enabling the unhindered movement of people necessary for a revitalising economy. We aim to revolutionise the way data and information are accessed through the open provision of informationto the widest possible audience in the format, style and content most suited to their needs.
2. Cloud Amber products enable Traffic Managers to model, monitor and control the environmental effects of travel as well as reducing congestion to maximise the use of a limited road network. From this same data source Cloud Amber provide our Voyager products and services relating to accidents, roadworks, congestion, air quality and the state of the road network in general to empower road users to make informed travel decisions to avoid congestion hotspots.

 For more information and images please contact:

            Richard Thurbin, Technical Director, Mobile: +44 (0) 7917 704 145

Downloadable version - PDF 124KB

Our first Argonaut Workshop is scheduled for September the 8th. All the details have been posted on the Cloud Amber User Group Portal (http://usergroup.cloudamber.com), as will the meeting notes, actions and other associated documentation output from the meeting. If you have not yet registered for the portal, you will find a registration link on the login page.

If you would like to attend the workshop, please could you contact us so we can confirm the numbers. We ask that only one representative from each authority attends in order to keep the numbers manageable.

If you have any questions or have any additions to the agenda, please ring, email or post a message on our portals message forum.

One of the most important issues raised at the User Group in Dorset was the need for a discussion space for Users. We have responded to this by creating a User Group portal. The site will act as a forum for Users as well as a space where we can post updates and solutions.

To access the site you will first need to register, to do this click on http://usergroup.cloudamber.com, or paste the URL into your address field. There you will find a link to the registration page where you will be asked to create a login name and password. Once registered you should be granted access to the portal within 24 hours.

We hope you find the new space useful. If you have any problems accessing the registration form or gaining access to the site please contact us.

Poole was selected both for its glorious location by the sea, and for its pure symbolism…. Also, in linking the 3 Authorities of Poole, Bournemouth and Dorset, Cloud Amber believes we have taken Urban Traffic to the next level, UTMC3, -extending the UTMC specification to make Unified Transport Management Control a reality.

Of the 20 Cloud Amber users people had come from Shires including Surrey, Hampshire and the Cloud Amber Research and Development headquarters based in Cambridgeshire.

Consultants from as far afield as the North West and Newcastle appeared. They were extremely helpful in reading the Agenda and telling us what we should be doing next. In truth, independent and unbiased advice from consultants from a commercial perspective has been invaluable at helping a small company negotiate its way through the world of big business.

Another welcome new face was the representative from The Highways Agency who was anxious to recruit unsuspecting Authorities to join the TIH. Having implemented the first Datex2 link, Cloud Amber are keen to work more closely in the future with the HA.

More information on the user group, what was discussed and the outcome of the two days can be found on our new User Group Portal. Please register on http://usergroup.cloudamber.com.

This is particularly heart warming to hear at Cloud Amber HQ as the development team have put some considerable effort in to making complicated functions and features very simple and easy to use. There is an old saying in development circles "It is very easy to make something very complicated, very complicated. The art is in making it very easy". Users of Argonaut need not learn script, code, SQL or any other techy nonsense. Instead screens are laid out simply, easily with wizards and screen prompts to lead users through each process step by step.

This industry first delivery was achieved on budget and on time with the customer in Warwickshire happy with the end result. Cloud Amber and Warwickshire are continuing their partnership together and are already planning further developments and expansions to their system in the coming months and years.

To view the Warwickshire Voyager system in action go to www.warwickshirevoyager.com.