For twenty years a taxi office's dispatch system was a server in a back room, a licence per dispatcher PC and an engineer who visited when something broke. Cloud dispatch moves the server to the vendor and the console into a browser. That is the whole technical change; everything else on this page is a consequence of it.
What on-premise means in practice
The operator owns the hardware and the responsibility that comes with it: the server, its backups, its power supply, the office internet and the radio or data link to drivers. Licences are commonly sold per seat or per PC, upgrades arrive as projects, and the system's uptime is the office's uptime. Data sits on the premises, which some operators value, and the cost is front-loaded: hardware and installation up front, support contracts after.
What changes when it moves to the cloud
- The console is a browser tab: any PC, any location, a dispatcher who can work from home on a snow day.
- Billing becomes a subscription — per driver, per vehicle or per trip depending on the vendor — and the capital expense disappears.
- Releases ship continuously instead of as upgrade projects; a fix can be live the same week it is reported.
- Backups, uptime and security patching are the vendor's job, and should be described in writing.
- Drivers' apps talk to the same system from anywhere with mobile data, with no office hardware in the loop.
Where on-premise still has a case
If the office internet fails, a cloud console is unreachable until it returns — although drivers' phones were always on mobile data, so the dispatch itself can carry on from a dispatcher's own phone or hotspot. Some operators have contractual or personal reasons to keep data on their own premises. Some have paid off hardware and licences and face no monthly bill at all until the next forced upgrade. And some run hardware — in-car terminals, radio systems, meter integrations — that a particular on-premise system was built around. These are real reasons, and a cloud vendor should answer them rather than wave them away.
The questions that settle it
- Internet: what does the office do during an outage, and does the dispatcher have a second connection?
- Data: who holds it, where, and what can you export at any time without asking?
- Cost over three years: subscription plus onboarding versus hardware, licences, support and the next upgrade.
- Fixes: how fast does a reported problem reach production, and can you see the release notes?
- Power: what happens to dispatch when the office loses power at 2 a.m. on a Saturday?
How TaxiDex approaches it
TaxiDex is cloud dispatch: the console runs in a browser, drivers use the TaxiDex driver app, and billing is per active driver with a published monthly minimum. Releases are listed on the changelog. For operators moving off an on-premise system we publish a migration protocol in which both systems run side by side, the new one shadow-dispatching while the old one stays authoritative, and the old platform stays licensed as the rollback until three clean days have passed. Read it before any vendor — us included — tells you a migration is simple.
Cloud or on-premise is not the decision. Who is responsible when it breaks, and what you can take with you when you leave, are the decisions.