Always in Time
For Bremen-based shipping company Beluga Shipping, the "new world" of networked ICT technology is an essential part of meeting highly complex transport requirements "right in time".
Today, Beluga Shipping GmbH employs 286 workers on land, in the most important ports on all five continents, and 1,400 aboard its current fleet of 47 specialized ships. By the end of 2010, just under 70 multifunctional heavy-goods cargo ships will be at sea under Niels Stolberg's flag, laden with, for example, entire meat processing plants from the Finnish company Manyluoto to Uruguay’s Fray Bentos; power plant technology from the USA to India; and a harbor crane of almost 40 meters in height – standing upright – from Antwerp to Puerto Rico.
Balancing act on the high seas
Anyone who sets such a pace, who understands logistics as a quality factor relevant to competition, and who has a global presence, must have a state-of-the-art ICT network. Absolute adherence to delivery dates is the law at Beluga, whose business is transacted almost 100% via e-mail. The Beluga IT Department has set high benchmarks: the highest level of availability, and a guaranteed system downtime limited to no more than 15 minutes for e-mail traffic.
Adherence to delivery dates is law
The initial challenge was to migrate a myriad of stand-alone solutions, which "evolved historically" with the old system in the young company, into homogenous structures of innovative IT solutions. Together Beluga IT and T-Systems succeeded in uniting the "old world" of IT in the shipping business with the "new world" of networked information and communication technology.
Each day, more than 10,000 business-related e-mails arrive and depart from the computers at Beluga. Once sent, it is crucial that none of the essentially critical messages gets lost. That's why every e-mail that passes between the branch offices and their agents, customers, Bremen headquarters and the 56 freighters, is saved on two systems. With a terminal emulation, as many of the numerous outside employees as possible can communicate efficiently and reliably, as called for when the "Daily News" arrives at the vastly growing company.
Each day, more than 10,000 business-related e-mails arrive and depart from the computers at Beluga. Once sent, it is crucial that none of the essentially critical messages gets lost. That's why every e-mail that passes between the branch offices and their agents, customers, Bremen headquarters and the 56 freighters, is saved on two systems. With a terminal emulation, as many of the numerous outside employees as possible can communicate efficiently and reliably, as called for when the "Daily News" arrives at the vastly growing company.
The virtualized server systems operate fully independently of each other without interaction problems. The result: There is greater security against failure and costs are greatly reduced thanks to more efficient use of hardware.
What does Snap Shot entail? – Why did this feature quickly become a real favorite among the Beluga team? Read the whole story about the Bremen shipping company that uses the latest ICT solutions to fly the flag in the print version.
