
In earlier days of software technology deployment to water utilities, vendors pushed for on-premise storage of data and technological tools (even software). Servers were deployed to give the engineers at the water utility a sense that their data was ‘secure’ and available at all times. The water system engineer was comfortable in this seeming middle ground between having all their technology and data ‘somewhere out there at someone else’s mercy’ and having full control. Unfortunately, this approach wasn’t scalable to address all the needs the water system engineer had.