Cloud Computing – Helping Transport for London Manage Travel Information for Mobile App Developers

Transport for London (TfL) and Microsoft have today announced that the TfL TrackerNet, an online Developers' Area containing free travel information for mobile apps (application) producers, is now available on a Windows Azure Cloud platform. The free-to-use information will enable developers to update existing, and produce new, apps to give passengers a choice of ways to check the status of their journeys while on the move.

The Developers' Area contains TfL's data feeds and allows developers to create applications for mobile and other devices for use by the public. Feeds available include information on the location of cycle hire docking stations, timetable data and real time traffic and roadworks information along the entire TfL transport network in and around London.

The latest data feed to be added to the Area and onto Windows Azure is called 'Trackernet' - an innovative new realtime display of the status of the London Underground 'Tube' network. Trackernet is able to display the locations of trains, their destinations, signal aspects and the status of individual trains at any given time. This works by taking four data feeds from TfL's servers and making it available to developers and the public via the Windows Azure platform.

Microsoft and TfL have worked in partnership to create this scalable and strategic platform. The platform is resilient enough to handle several million requests per day and will enable TfL to make other feeds available in the future via the same mechanism, at a sustainable cost. To check out Trackernet for yourself, take a look here.

You can read more about this exciting development in highly-scalable and resilient cloud computing at the Microsoft Windows Azure blog and the TfL News Centre.

Posted by Ian