contents

business
 
Infonic Announces a Major Contract with Odfjell

Infonic has announced a major contract with Odfjell, a Norwegian-based global freight company that specialises in transportation and storage of bulk chemicals. Odfjell has purchased Infonic's Geo-Replicator network acceleration software for deployment across its 60-strong fleet to deliver two-way ship to shore updating of its Quality and Safety Management System (QSMS). Infonic's patented data compression technology enables Odfjell to provide an up-to-date QSMS to its crew members, wherever they are in the world, at an affordable cost.

The solution that Infonic's partner Confido developed for Odfjell converts pdfs into html files and then uses Infonic Geo-Replicator's differencing algorithms to compress that HTML by over 90%. This makes a fully collaborative, pdf-based QSMS viable for ships at sea.

Odfjell are also deploying Infonic's Geo-Replicator technology to replicate news and other websites to the servers on board their ships at sea. This will enable Odfjell to provide crews, working in a largely disconnected remote environments, with 24-hour access to up-to-date news and entertainment. The news pages that are being replicated by Geo-Replicator look and feel exactly as if the end user were accessing them online. All buttons and search functions work exactly as on the live site, but in reality the content is being stored locally by Infonic's technology and then updated when a satellite link is available.

The benefit to the crew's welfare from having 24-hour access to up-to-date news is immense. It enables people working at sea to keep up with events around the world and significantly reduces their sense of isolation at sea. These innovations are very important as crew recruitment and retention are major issues for any fleet operator.

Benefits of Infonic Geo-Replicator to fleet satellite users:
• Ensures that all users, irrespective of network connection, have access to key operational data.
• Allows remote WAN users to access central data at LAN speeds.
• Reduces WAN and server costs.
• Guarantees QSMS service even when there is no network coverage.



write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page