Long and winding railroad – heading for the cloud

Iconic Union Pacific needed to match their railroad operations sophistication with a high-speed digital strategy and took to the cloud with SAP. By replacing legacy siloed back-office operations with new holistic fit-to-standard cloud applications, they are achieving greater visibility, speed, and agility than ever before. Credit: iStock On a recent bicycle ride with friends, I was stopped at a railroad crossing waiting for a long freight train. It was an iconic American experience to witness. It allowed me to catch my breath as I counted the 148 railcars, winding their way across the county connecting their freight to the next step on their supply chain journey. I couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer size of the train powered by two engines. It is no wonder that railroads are the most fuel-efficient way to move freight, able to move a ton of freight nearly 500 miles per gallon of fuel . It would take hundreds of trucks to do the same job. As the train sped by, I thought of all the people, equipment, maintenance, fuel, and communication that is involved in keeping the railroad system going. SAP customer Union Pacific Railroad operates across 23 states with 32,124 miles […]

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