Data Democratization: The Modern Infrastructure and Cutting-Edge Technologies Behind Trimble Construction One

The world around us is changing at a rapid pace. As new technologies come online, they can change the very nature of entire industries and the infrastructures that support them.

Given the rapid pace of change in today's world, the level of flexibility that modern technologies provide is something that companies need to embrace through investment in their IT infrastructure to keep day-to-day operations running efficiently—especially through unprecedented business disruptions and sudden changes.

Many of today’s leading contractors are modernizing their operations—embracing integrated, cloud-based construction software platforms and technologies to streamline workflows and achieve real-time access to project data.

What is Data Democratization? 

Put simply, democratizing data means workers have the ability to access up-to-date data on projects, which creates a much more connected construction operation, with ongoing data-centric and collaborative communication flowing fluidly between the back office, field, and extended project teams. Workers are empowered with the tools and knowledge they need to actively use data to accomplish organizational goals and complete projects on time. 

The next step in this ongoing digital transformation is data transformation—leveraging leading cloud providers with ever-evolving technologies that improve how your construction data is collected, stored, analyzed and used.

The seamless integration of cloud-based construction ERP software, intuitive web and mobile applications, robust data storage and processing capabilities as well as powerful analytic and business intelligence tools that make up the our integrated Trimble Construction One suite are making today’s construction data transformation possible.

By establishing a single source of truth with real time centralized data, you can easily do more with your data today to improve how your business operates than imaginable just years ago, allowing you to unlock new possibilities and work smarter rather than harder.

Trimble Construction One's workflows can often accomplish in minutes what has traditionally taken weeks or even months to pull together through a variety of players including back office staff, IT professionals, project managers and executives.

The best part? You don’t need a team of expensive data scientists and hours of labor-intensive work to get to this level of insight. Virtually anyone can get the data relevant to them or their teams with just a few clicks of a mouse.

Trimble Construction One’s solutions were designed for the cloud and built on a modern infrastructure that leverages cutting-edge technologies you may have heard of, such as Microsoft Azure, and also some powerful solutions maybe you haven’t heard of, like Snowflake and Kafka.

It's likely that doesn't mean much to you, but here’s why that's important:

Trimble Construction One: A Strong Construction Data Foundation, Scalable for the Future

The power of Trimble Construction One's data capabilities is made possible by having a strong data foundation. Snowflake, for example, is one of the components of the cloud data platform that we leverage. It allows Trimble Construction One to support virtually unlimited data storage and, with its elastic computing capabilities, flexibly scale with customers’ changing data needs.

The modern data warehouse it provides allows secure and governed access to all accessible data, applying the latest data science to fuel the processes and features you use in Trimble Construction One each and every day.

Even further behind the scenes, we're utilizing a Service Oriented Architecture with micro-services—small, modular and independently deployable services that help us manage Trimble Construction One’s data processes and deliver them to you in a seamless experience. Docker containers (for Linux and Windows) simplify deployment and testing by bundling a service and its dependencies into a single unit, which is then run in an isolated environment. This makes Trimble Construction One easier to build and manage, and much easier to expand and scale as your needs and our solutions to them grow.

A Simplified User Experience

Behind the scenes, Trimble Construction One solutions deploy a number of leading-edge technologies that further improve your user experience.

Confluent Kafka for instance, is a powerful data streaming platform. Founded by the original developers of Apache Kafka, Confluent makes it easy to build real-time data pipelines and streaming applications in Trimble Construction One by integrating data from multiple sources and locations into a single, central event streaming platform.

Two Microsoft Azure technologies, meanwhile, help you access more through the Trimble Construction One suite, while doing less.

1. Azure Active Directory Seamless Single Sign-On provides easy access to cloud-based applications without requiring additional on-premises components by automatically signing in users when they are on corporate devices connected to their network.
2. Azure Cognitive Services bring voice recognition and natural language processing to Trimble Construction One and gives your users in the field an easier and more natural way to communicate commands from their mobile devices and enter data into the ERP without the use of a keyboard.

True Data Protection and Security

Because we know the critical importance of your data security, Trimble Construction One also employs the latest security controls to make sure your data is protected at all times. All Trimble Construction One solutions are SOC 2, Type I and SOC 2, Type II certified, signifying that our cloud systems and associated control processes satisfy the SOC security control standards as denoted in the AICPA Trust Services Criteria for Security. 

This designation complements Viewpoint’s existing ISO27001:2013 and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications which cover the development of Viewpoint for Projects in the UK, as well as Viewpoint’s TrustE Privacy Shield certification.

What do all of these behind-the-scenes technologies allow us to do? Deliver unparalleled functionality and a scalable, easy-to-use construction data platform to you. Trimble Construction One’s solutions are designed for flexibility, both to meet your specific needs as well as in licensing and pricing.

The ability to bundle solutions based on end user needs means contractors can maximize their technology investments today while ensuring the decision doesn't have an expiration date.

Data storage and backups are consistently managed by Trimble Viewpoint, removing the burden—and costs—of having to manage capital assets, such as maintaining expensive in-house servers or relying on third-party data providers. And, because Trimble Construction One leverages the cloud to instantly deliver software updates and new functionality, your IT staff can focus on other important areas of the business.

This is just the start of what Trimble Construction One can bring to the table.

The potential of the technologies behind Trimble Construction One are poised to help you transform your business, and are why we've invested so heavily in building a platform that allows us to support your growing needs along the way.

In order to build the construction accounting and operational products of tomorrow, we had to first build an IT infrastructure suitable for today. That meant moving the majority of our existing infrastructure to the cloud and modernizing our development processes at the same time.

We'll cover, in a future blog, how this infrastructure leads us toward bringing you deeper AI and machine learning capabilities shortly, so stay tuned

To learn more about Trimble Construction One’s technology stack and how it has been purpose-built to make your management burden simpler and your own operations run easier, contact us today.