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NETWORK PERFORMANCE From the July 2006 issue of Communications News |
Chips keep ships afloat by Marc Courchesne Modern shipping companies are highly mobile and require large amounts of navigational, legal and technical information processing for safe and efficient operation at sea. Booming business has left many shippers and transportation intermediaries in need of a centralized, scalable, information technologies platform on which to plan, process, monitor and share shipment information. CargoSmart is an online application and integration services provider that was savvy enough to upgrade its existing IT infrastructure to support its rapid growth. Launched in 2000 and built on an open, scalable architecture that can be integrated into any customer’s enterprise system, CargoSmart delivers application, integration and hybrid solutions that enable parties with varied technology capabilities, business needs and roles in the shipment process to manage their shipments with multiple carriers throughout the shipment cycle. Those parties can seamlessly connect to their network of suppliers, customers, logistics providers, ocean carriers and other business divisions. Customers are able to manage shipments using online, offline, mobile and direct integration solutions. With more than 30,000 customers and approximately 300 new members weekly, CargoSmart adds 215,000 new shipment records to its system monthly, sends 150,000 shipment status milestone e-mail notification and exception alerts, and generates more than 25,000 reports. While its system was originally designed to handle high-transaction volumes, CargoSmart’s success required an infrastructure upgrade to ensure it would be able to accommodate rapid growth in the future. The company needed to improve its IT platform to maintain business continuity, as its existing infrastructure would not be able to cope with the rising number of accounts created by new clients, as well as the sheer volume of information and transactions processed and stored on its servers. CargoSmart’s IT department concluded that moving the company’s applications and database onto a more streamlined IT platform was a strategic necessity. Apart from a lower total cost of ownership, the migration would help to ensure 24x7 business continuity, as well as establish disaster-recovery capabilities that would allow the company to resume operations with minimal disruption as part of its customer-service guarantee. The adoption of a standards-compliant infrastructure to support the company’s service-delivery system was vital to managing the needs of the company’s growing business, while responding promptly to customers’ needs. After a thorough proof-of-concept exercise, CargoSmart implemented new standards-based systems to power its applications. The company replaced its database platform with an Itanium 2-based system running HP-UX 11i v2, providing CargoSmart’s IT department with enhanced levels of application and database availability and data protection. This 64-bit, fault-tolerant technology delivers the speed and performance required by CargoSmart to meet and exceed its customers’ business-critical demands. “The decision to migrate to an Itanium 2-based platform was based on clearly defined future product road maps and superior server performance,” says Steve Siu, chief executive officer of CargoSmart. “Our new platform helps us support high customer transaction volumes and future business growth.” The new infrastructure gives close to 200% more performance per CPU, Siu says, and a lower total cost of ownership performance as compared to its previous server platform. The new service-delivery system offers high availability, with uptime of more than 99.99%. Maintenance and upgrades are simpler and less expensive, Siu adds. Marc Courchesne is with HP,
Nashua, New Hampshire, which is a member of the Itanium Solutions Alliance, a
global community of hardware, operating system and application vendors
dedicated to accelerating the adoption and ongoing development of Itanium
solutions.
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