Geo–Replicator Case Studies.
US Marine Corps.
Giving maintenance crews 24/7 access to online manuals, in the Gulf and around the world - This is extremely efficient for Shell since its safety documents are updates of files already existing on the ship's computers.
- Client:
- United States Marine Corps
- Country:
- USA
- Industry:
- Defense.
- Profile:
- Amphibious military force.
- Key Drivers:
- Improved access in the field to maintenance materials within a SharePoint portal.
USMC deployments in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere employ vast amounts of equipment, including vehicles and weapons systems. The task of keeping that equipment in good working order falls to the Marines’ huge force of “maintainers”. These men and women work to ensure that all Marine equipment, when it is called upon, is in a safe, reliable and fully operational state of repair. To perform this enormous and often complex task, the maintainers require access to all of the maintenance manuals and records that accompany USMC equipment.
To improve the information access and collaboration facilities available to their maintainers in the field, the USMC deployed Microsoft SharePoint. The maintainers now had access to a portal that stored all of the manuals and records they needed, via a laptop PC. Publishing of updated manuals was now instant from the technician in the US, to all of the maintainers using the portal around the world.
SharePoint has dramatically improved the accuracy of, and the access to, maintenance documentation. However, SharePoint relies on a high bandwidth internet connection. Without a connection, the portal is inaccessible, and with a slow connection the download times for large manuals are unfeasibly long.
To address this problem and to extend the portal to users with no or little network bandwidth, the USMC has deployed Infonic’s Geo-Replicator software on its maintainer’s laptops in the Gulf region.
United States Navy.
Distance Support, Sailor to Engineer program - Connecting Sailors to expert technicians on shore.
- Client:
- United States Navy
- Country:
- USA
- Industry:
- Defense.
- Profile:
- The world’s largest naval force. Founded in 1775 and operating around the world.
- Key Drivers:
- Improving onboard engineer access to the Navy’s "Distance Support" SharePoint portal while at sea.
Maintenance issues, and the delays they cause, are a significant burden on Navy resources. Ferrying experts to ships is expensive and the downtime is detrimental to fleet operations.
To enhance the ability of its on board technicians, the Navy has created the “Distance Support” web portal, to give personnel on ships instant access to full and up-to-date maintenance documentation.
The effectiveness of the portal was, however, limited by bandwidth availability over the navy’s satellite network.
Infonic’s Geo-Replicator technology provides the bandwidth optimization that makes the updating of the Distance Support portal possible across the entire fleet via satellite. Geo-Replicator enables the Navy to run an up-to-date portal on all of its ships and substantially reduces demand on the Navy’s satellite network, as well as reducing the cost of transporting experts to ships.