Java Magic: Freight Forward

As an early adopter of Java

computing solutions, CSX Corp has proven it can dramatically improve customer service and

increase revenues while reducing operational costs. The company is the largest global

freight transporter in the US, with revenues over $10.5 billion. CSX's operations include

more than 31,000 miles of railroad track, commercial ocean liner transport with ports in

more than 70 countries and the only coast-to-coast, full-service, intermodel shipping

service in the United States.

CSX Technology, a business

subsidiary of CSX, has attracted the enthusiastic attention of both internal users and

customers. With Java computing, CSX Technology improved business systems and drove down

the cost of desktop deployment and maintenance. CSX estimates its use of Java computing

will save as much as 70% of the cost of other alternatives.

CSX Technology mapped out and

piloted an advanced Java-based enterprise computing plan with Sun JavaStations in a

heterogeneous environment across CSX's intranets and extranets. CSX empowered its user

base with one of the largest mission-critical applications ever written in Java.

"JavaStations are part of the enabling technology that will help us as a company, and

as an industry, revolutionize our customer service," remarks John Andrews, President

of CSX Technology.

As one of its guiding principles,

CSX has long recognized the importance of its relationships with customers. One way to

strengthen these ties is to give customers a better and faster way to place orders and

track shipments en route. To this end, CSX developed its original Transportation

Workstation (TWS) application, written in C for the OS/2 platform.

A Javatized version of TWS



With the emergence of web-based technologies and Java computing, CSX saw an opportunity to
revisit its business model to deploy a much more cost-effective solution for its diverse

users. "Java has become important for our business because our business model is

changing. We are becoming much more customer-centric, which has caused us to become much

more network-centric. Once you have the network in place, Java desktops are literally plug

and play," states Andrews.

In early 1996, the new computing

vision at CSX was only a concept that had to be proven. Andrews assembled his development

team with a singular, six-week mission: develop and deploy a javatized version of TWS for

the railroad side of the business, on an intranet, from the ground up. His reasoning was

simple: for the new Java-based computing model to meet the company's needs, rapid

application development would be essential. CSX was looking for something beyond what it

already had, and it wanted proven, cross-platform technologies and the flexibility to

offer new services at the drop of a hat. "The transportation industry used to be an

asset-based service delivery process," Andrews explains. "Now it has to be an

information and service delivery process. In transportation, information has become the

difference between breaking away or falling behind."

The TWSNet solution



The new application, dubbed TWSNet, was a big success. Since its trial by fire, TWSNet has
been enhanced with a variety of services including rail car and tanker management, service

history and fleet management and even common desktop productivity tools like email and

contact databases. For customers, the service palette includes waybill entry, shipment

tracking and damage claims, with selective access to the company's mainframe database.

It is now possible for CSX to

extend electronic links to more users than ever before. PC users can instantly deploy the

applications with a Java-enabled web browser. CSX is committed to the Java computing

strategy because of the low total cost of ownership, centralized administration, platform

independence and ability to be deployed incrementally. "Java came out on top,"

says Andrews of his rigorous evaluation of Java technologies. "It allowed us to get

our information product to market much more quickly and effectively."

DEPLOYMENT: TWSNet,

developed and deployed for less than $1 million, was rolled out just 90 days after the

project began. The first email release included shipment-status queries, email, access to

the corporate address book, customer account information and an interactive shipment

tracking map (access to tracking maps is not possible on 3,270 devices since they are

text-based). TWSNet now supports freight-car ordering, freight claims and bill of lading

submissions. The current release adds equipment pool management, performance monitoring

and pricing information.

Today, Java computing is being

favorably evaluated in 15 of CSX's largest customer sites using Java-enabled browsers on

PCs. At CSX, JavaStations run the HotJava browser, and a dedicated Sun UltraSPARC server

sits behind the corporate firewall. Information is housed in an Oracle database on an

UltraSPARC, and regular updates come from the IBM Series 9000 mainframe.

Results and the future



"From CSX's perspective, we believe that Java computing has saved us well over $5
million on an annual basis," approximates Andrews. And the advantage to CSX customers

has also been quite significant. With TWSNet, customers can address questions as they

arise and get immediate answers to pressing business issues. "The customer response

has been very positive," says Andrews.

TWSNet is proving so successful

that CSX is looking forward to worldwide deployment shortly. "We see very few

applications here at CSX where the JavaStation won't be able to complement or replace our

PC deployments," states Andrews. CSX projects as many as tens of thousands of

JavaStation desktops could be deployed internally and at customer sites over the next two

years. The company is also planning to roll out an expanded version of TWSNet with oceanic

and inter-model shipping capabilities.

Java is creating previously

unforeseen opportunities in ecommerce. The company has been approached by other

transportation companies in the hope that CSX might consider marketing its modular

software solution to their shipping companies. "We see the Java-enabled future here

at CSX to be terrific," says Andrews. "The capabilities are much more expansive

than we thought."

Courtesy: Sun

Microsystems (India)