Geo–Replicator for US Marine Corps.
Giving maintenance crews 24/7 access to online manuals.
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.
The Marines also have a team of technical writers, who are continuously publishing new and improved manuals that employ in-the-field learnings and the latest technology, to improve the way maintenance is performed.
Until recently, the task of taking all maintenance documentation into the field was carried out via a paper based system, where maintainers carried foot lockers containing their manuals and documents. The bulky paper documents were updated via the military mail service.
Because the USMC operate such a variety of equipment, in so many remote locations, this paper system was highly inefficient.
Carrying offline SharePoint into the field, not filing cabinets
To improve the information access and collaboration facilities available to their maintainers in the field, the USMC deployed Microsoft SharePoint in a pilot project. The maintainers now had access to a portal that gave them access to 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.
The project demonstrated that SharePoint dramatically improves 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 deployed Infonic’s Geo-Replicator software on all of its pilot project laptops in the Gulf region.
Geo-Replicator provides the USMC maintainers with a complete offline version of their Microsoft SharePoint maintenance portal.
Geo-Replicator allows the maintainer to search the portals many technical manuals during maintenance procedures without needing a satellite internet connection. The virtual SharePoint site looks and works exactly as if they were connected to a US based SharePoint server via a T1 connection.
Choosing Geo-Replicator
“The USMC Maintainers need to have access to tens of gigabytes of data 24/7 if they are to do their job effectively. Now, rather than carrying around huge foot lockers of manuals, the information can all be stored on a laptop, within the Geo-Replicator offline version of the portal, which looks and works exactly like the online version,” reports Infonic’s VP Mark Mueller.
Benefits of Geo-Replicator:
Instant access to critical SharePoint content offline in the most remote areas of the world.
Instant publishing of up-to-date maintenance documentation across the globe.
Dramatic reduction in the cost of data transmission.
Improved maintenance crew performance and reduced costs.
Improved collaboration between maintainers and US based Subject Matter Experts.
Satellite bandwidth is left available for other USMC purposes.
The Infonic Geo-Replicator Solution
Infonic Geo-Replicator provides the USMC maintainers with an offline replica of their pilot SharePoint based maintenance portal. This virtual SharePoint server is heavily compressed to enable the entire portal to be efficiently stored on a standard laptop. It looks, feels and works for the maintainer exactly as if they were connected directly to their SharePoint server on-base in the United States. But, they are not. They are viewing the web site compressed by around 80% and stored on the hard drive of their laptop. The maintainer experiences the rich look and feel of the portal and enjoys all of the search and other functionality they would expect online.
Infonic’s patented Geo-Replicator technology is also used by the USMC project in combination with Adobe Connect, which enables video conferencing and photo sharing, to provide effective collaboration between Marines in the field and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) at helpdesks around the world. This collaboration over low bandwidth is made possible because with Infonic only the bytes of data within a document that have changed need to be transmitted. This greatly reduces the size of the data sent during collaborative between maintainer and SME.
Infonic and Smartronix Complete Acceptance Testing on Marine Corps Contract
Press Release RESTON, Virginia, July 29, 2008
Companies will provide collaboration capability for troops in remote locations
Infonic and Smartronix today announced that they have completed acceptance testing on a portal-based collaborative planning suite for tactical mission planning with the U.S. Marine Corps.
The solution is centered on the Tactical Collaborative Work Suite (TCWS) from Smartronix. TCWS is a mobile and redundant network and information architecture for supporting deployed collaborative and command and control (C2) requirements. Infonic’s Geo-Replicator solution will be used in conjunction with TCWS to enable troops in remote locations to have access to large amounts of data.
“By combining our technologies, Smartronix and Infonic will greatly enhance the capabilities of Marine Corps troops deployed in remote locations,” said Rob Baker, VP Marine Corps & Navy programs for Smartronix. “The USMC will be well served by our collaboration solution.”
“This partnership between Infonic and Smartronix makes perfect sense for the collaboration solution that the Marine Corps needs,” said Jon Newhard, Senior VP for North America and Asia for Infonic. “Our engineers are working hard to ensure that our technology is customized to meet the needs of the deployed Marine Corps troops.”
Smartronix is a global professional solutions provider specializing in Networking and Systems Management, Information Systems Security, Application Integration and Development, Software and Hardware Engineering, and Business Management Services. Smartronix is headquartered in California, MD with operating offices in Virginia (4), North Carolina, Florida (2), Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and Arizona with 550 employees throughout the US and at strategic locations in Korea, Japan, Qatar, and the Philippines. The company has been recognized as an Employer of Choice by Northern Virginia Family Service and as one of the fastest 50 growing companies in the Greater Washington area and one of the top 500 nationally as ranked by Washington Post and Inc 500 media, respectively.
TCWS is a portal-based collaborative planning suite for tactical mission planning. It is comprised of hardened communications devices and proven software including SharePoint (200X) to provide fowardly deployed warfighters constant communication with headquarters. As currently configured by the USMC, it is designed to be used in a paired configuration: one module forwardly deployed and the other further in the rear. As the rearward element leaps ahead and become the forward unit it is imperative that both units are totally synchronized and one version of the data is held on both TCWS modules.
Obviously this is an environment of challenged networks but one where constant, up-to-date unified communication is a must. Infonic Geo-Replicator provides byte level differencing so that only the bytes that have changed are sent between each TCWS module thus dramatically reducing the amount of data sent and negating the reliance on poor connectivity in challenging battlefield environments. The USMC eventually hopes to have a configuration where there is a more permanent deployed TCWS in the far rear battleground where the intermediate and the forwardly deployed server will be sending their data back and forth.
Geo-Replicator Offline Demonstrator
Click here to download a free standing SharePoint offline demonstrator and see how collaboration can be achieved without 24x7 connectivity
For more infomation please contact: dc.sales@infonic.com or Enquire Online.
