As the first company providing designated service in Taiwan, Taiwan Designated Driver (TWDD) has been committed to providing users with a safer option to return home after drinking since its establishment in 2015. Through its user-friendly app service, Taiwan Designated Driver ensures that certified drivers can arrive at the designated location in the shortest time and safely deliver customers and their cars to the designated place, aiming to create a safer and better transportation ecosystem.
The demand for designated drivers in Taiwan should not be underestimated. David, the chief technology officer of Taiwan’s designated driver, mentioned, “The designated driving culture is still not popular in Taiwan. We hope to seamlessly integrate mobile technology with designated driving services, making the designated driving culture a part of people’s lives, making life more convenient, and reducing drunk-driving accidents extensively.” As the top brand in Taiwan’s designated driving market, Taiwan Designated Driver mainly provides its service to the six Municipalities in Taiwan. It is estimated that there are as many as 100,000 ride-hailing orders every month.
Adhering to the spirit of innovation, Taiwan Designated Driver continues to launch new solutions to meet growing needs in Taiwan. However, as the amount of user data grew dramatically, the company realized that the local data center provided limited flexibility and storage which is not effective for business operation. What’s more, the maintenance and operation management became more and more complicated. Therefore, Taiwan Designated Driver approached CloudMile, a company that has rich experiences in assisting enterprises in digital transformation, to adopt Google Cloud Platform. The following are the four key points for evaluating the migration:
- Google Cloud has a data center in Taiwan and offers 99.99% availability, guaranteeing better response time and stability for its users.
- Google Cloud provides a comprehensive data and AI ecosystem. It’s beneficial for Taiwan Designated Driver to leverage the power of data warehouse BigQuery to conduct car-hailing data analysis and advanced forecasting applications.
- Google Cloud Storage is selected for its high scalability, and Cloud SQL, a fully managed relational database service, is chosen to reduce the workload of on-prem data center and database management.
- Google Cloud provides a user-friendly and easy-to-use interface, eliminating the need for maintaining the infrastructure environment. Therefore, IT personnel can focus on innovative development and accelerate the speed to market.
Currently, Taiwan Designated Driver is gradually migrating local systems and its data to the cloud, greatly improving the loading speed and stability of its service. Additionally, historical car-calling data is being analyzed using Google Cloud data warehouse BigQuery, including special festivals and weathers to optimize driving routes, to estimate arrival times, and to predict restaurant hotspots. The aim is to reduce the matching time between passengers and drivers during bad weather conditions and provide passengers with a more customized and accurate ride-hailing experience.
Taiwan Designated Driver, in partnership with Google Cloud and CloudMile, aims to create an ecosystem combining transportation and restaurant services with a data driven approach. David stated, "Through Google Cloud's comprehensive data ecosystem and CloudMile’s prompt technical support, we can focus on developing new services. We look forward to the future cooperation with CloudMile for more possibilities."
In the future, Taiwan Designated Driver aims to provide more optimized services for its customers. The company recently launched the platform "Joymap" that combines restaurant food reservations, location information and its delivery services. The company will continue to partner with Google Cloud and CloudMile to leverage the power of cloud computing and big data to enhance its car-hailing and online-ordering experiences, dedicated to Taiwan's transportation ecosystem.
