One of the great paradigm shifts in technology currently happening today is the use of the cloud. How it will eventually affect the parking industry is an open issue. It is already certain to affect how we store and process data and conduct business going forward. Operators and parking administrators must understand the implications and how best to deal with the cloud.Parking is currently affected by several changes:

• Municipalities and cities have identified parking as a major source of income.
• On-and off-street parking converge more and more into one business executed by one and the same party.
• Road pricing, city tolls, and parking have started to converge.
• Technology infrastructure and capabilities have changed radically.
• As a consequence, things that have been tied together or tied to a location can now be executed independent of location or time constraints (e.g. identification or payment).

In this highly competitive, globalized world, the cloud provides those who embrace it with a competitive advantage. Competition usually mandates growth. Cloud technology will continue to grow faster, achieving more geographical coverage with less effort and investmentIn most cases, different parking management systems come from different vendors, to be installed and used at geographically diverse parking lots. Cloud technology is ideally suited to not only retrieve information, but to also control devices or applications remotely, independent of locations or time of day. Centralized cloud control is not only cheaper to implement, but also standardizes the way car parks can be managed, leading to reduced training and operational costs. And most importantly, it allows the automation of repetitive tasks, which leads to reduce cost combined with an increase in process quality.

Car park operators offer new types of services over the internet. Using the internet opens a totally new business domain and a path to new revenue sources. Cloud technology allows car park operators to benefit from direct access to consumers and engage in new business-to-consumer business models.

In addition, adopters can avoid costly upgrades, improve compliance through effective standardization, reduce service and overhead costs, and can improve data security and availability.