Short Line Data Systems ROCS Update – April 2009

Website: www.sdsrocs.com

Also check out Steve’s blog at www.railresource.com

Greetings:

Spring has sprung, and we are in the midst of what has become the busiest month of the year for us.  As many of you know, we have been deeply involved with the planning and execution of the ASLRRA’s Annual Meeting, and with the growth of that event, our responsibilities have grown.  We’re going to give you a preview of what we have in store for the meeting in this update, as well as review the work that we have done over the last month with the next release of ROCS, Version 12, as well as our upcoming car hire receivable service.

ASLRRA Annual Meeting

It’s hard to believe, but the 2009 ASLRRA Annual Meeting is less than two weeks away.  This year’s event is at the Red Rock Resort and Casino in Summerlin, Nevada, which is 12 miles off of the Vegas strip.  It is truly amazing now much this event has grown, and a strong argument can be made that this has become the premier event in the railroad industry, and there is no other event like it anywhere.  The educational and networking opportunities are so vast that it has now at the point that you can’t cover everything by yourself.

It is our pleasure to be a Platinum sponsor of the event, and a major focus of the meeting for us has been the exhibit hall.  We will be located in booth 315/317, just about in the middle of the hall.  We will have all of our products on display and ready to demonstrate, and our usual selection of goodies for everyone.  We will also be holding a drawing for… an Acer Netbook Computer!  For those of you who don’t know what a Netbook is, this is a new class of laptop that is small and light (less than three pounds), runs Windows XP, and is designed with the business traveler in mind.

Our travel schedule for the Annual Meeting will be as follows:  on Wednesday, April 22, we will be flying out to Las Vegas.  For those of you in the Eastern or in the Central time zones, please remember that Nevada is in the Pacific Time zone, so there is a three hour time difference to the East.  The main events of the meeting start on Sunday , April 26, and continue through mid-day on Tuesday, April 28.  It will be best to reach us via email if you need us, and we will get back to you as soon as practically possible.  We will be flying back to New Jersey on April 30, so we will be out of touch most of the day.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone at the Annual Meeting, and please take a moment to stop by and visit us and drop your card to enter the drawing for the Netbook.

ROCS Version 12

We are getting closer to the release of Version 12.  , The first user of Version 12 will be a new customer that we will be announcing in the near future.  Following the new install, it is our plan to start rolling out the new version to existing users over the summer. 

We have taken care of a couple of bugs that had cropped up, and the new system has been running with no issues for a while now.   As we have mentioned in past updates you will be impressed by the improvements in message processing, and the increased fault tolerance within the system.  We will have Version 12 at the ASLRRA Annual Meeting for demonstrations, so stop by the booth and take a look.

Car Hire Receivables

As previously announced, we will be doing Car Hire Receivables as a service starting next month.  We have been working with Railinc to set up the proper message flow for the launch customer, who we will be announcing the identity of next month when start up their service.  We are trying to set things up so that we will not be a banker for this process.  It is our intention that you will handle all of the money, and we will handle the reports.  As long as you let us know that you have been paid for something, we will take care of the collection notices and reports.

If you have an interest in this service, please give us a call or stop by the booth in Las Vegas.

Well, I’m going to keep this update short.  We are very excited about the Annual Meeting and look forward to seeing everyone shortly out at Red Rock.  We’ll be back next month with a wrap up of the Annual Meeting and some announcements of new customers.

Stay safe,

Steven Friedland

President