Geo–Replicator for US Navy.
Distance Support Web Portal saves costs across the fleet.
US Navy uses Infonic Geo-Replicator for server replication in a number of Distance Support programs. Among these are:-
• ISLE (Integrated Shipboard Learning Environment)
Summary of programs
Many US naval ships have SharePoint installed, which means that 1.2 million files need to be synched six times a day to the central SharePoint installation in Indiana. To help the onboard ship maintenance technicians, the US Navy created the “Distance Support” Web portal to give personnel on ships instant access to full and up-to-date maintenance documentation. This portal also gives sailors instant access to engineering and logistics experts onshore in Port Hueneme, enabling them to get expert answers to questions regarding the maintenance of weapons, hull, mechanical and electrical systems.
However, the effectiveness of this portal was limited by bandwidth availability over the Navy’s satellite network. With enormous fleet demand for bandwidth, it was impossible to update the portal effectively over the network. Therefore updates to maintenance documentation had to be sent out to the ships on CDs and then manually uploaded. The military has more data than it has time to transmit it, so 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. Now, instead of the maintenance manuals in the Distance Support portal being updated every few months, they are now updated every few hours. Infonic’s Geo-Replicator software has reduced online document traffic about 90% to 95% for the US Navy.
What started out as a basic solution for getting technical repair manuals out to the ships has grown exponentially. Today, Infonic technology is being leveraged to address numerous business needs and solutions from crew retention and training to monitoring equipment sensors. In addition, since the servers are already there, anyone in the Navy can apply to the Distance Support Office to have their information sent to the ships. It typically takes 6 months from application to deployment, whereas installing a new server can be upwards of 2 years.
For more information on the Navy Distance Support program please visit http://www.anchordesk.navy.mil/
and
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3738/is_200003/ai_n8887458/pg_3
Below are just some of the programs that rely on Distance Support. In addition to better support of the Sailor and the mission, all these programs have recognized cost savings and become real business process enablers.
ICAS:
Using Sensorization Technology for Preventative Maintenance of Navy Ships
The Integrated Condition Assessment System (ICAS) Sensorization program helps NAVSEA assure that all ships in the US Navy are running smoothly. Through the use of sensors on the ships, equipment experts on shore can monitor the condition of ships and their components at sea, based on various metrics. The sensor data is collected by computers and is then analyzed by sophisticated algorithms and compared to past sensor data on board ship to detect if any equipment needs preventative maintenance.
Hundreds of megabytes of data are generated through this preventative maintenance program, which creates a huge challenge to efficiently send the sensors’ data off the ships to the shore via low bandwidth satellites, for the land based equipment experts to analyze. In effect, these huge databases are too large to be moved over low bandwidth satellites, but are not important enough to be transmitted over tactical satellites. But, to accurately and effectively keep hundreds of ships well-maintained, data needs to get to the experts in a timely manner.
Improving Delivery of Critical Data
Partnered with the Navy’s Distance Support program’s NIAPS server and Infonic’s Geo-Replication byte-level differencing technology, Naval Sea Systems Command was able to significantly compress the amount of sensor data that needed to be sent via satellite.
Instead of replicating the entire database to the equipment experts on shore, Geo-Replicator only replicates the updated bytes of information through the low-bandwidth, allowing for quicker access to information. Geo-replicator is able to compress megabytes of data down to only kilobytes of data tactually transmitted from ships to shore.
By saving time, reducing the need to have equipment experts on naval ships, and detecting irregularities with naval equipment before they become a problem, maintenance costs for the US Navy have been reduced by millions of dollars annually.
Sailor to Engineer
The United States Navy performs the bulk of its vessel maintenance at its naval bases. Between those scheduled overhauls, however, there remains periodic maintenance that must be performed at sea to keep the ships and equipment ready for deployment.
The Navy trains its on-board technicians to handle most of these maintenance scenarios. However, there are inevitably some tasks that are beyond what the onboard technicians can handle. They will typically complete these more complex tasks with the advice of a land based expert. In some cases, where problems require it, an expert will be flown to the ship to complete repairs.
These 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.
Improving on-board access to maintenance information
To enhance the ability of it’s 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. Through the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s “Sailor to Engineer” initiative, this portal also gives Sailors instant access to engineering and logistics experts at the NSWC in Port Hueneme. The “Sailor to Engineer” page of the portal enables sailors to get expert answers to questions regarding the maintenance of weapons, hull, mechanical, and electrical systems. The Sailor to Engineer page puts fleet technicians in contact with knowledgeable experts at anytime, anywhere.
The effectiveness of the portal was, however, limited by bandwidth availability over the Navy’s satellite network. With enormous fleet demand for bandwidth, it was impossible to update the portal effectively over the network. Therefore updates to maintenance documentation had to be sent out to the ships on CDs and then manually uploaded into the portal. This process was cumbersome and unreliable.
For this collaborative operation, the Navy is using SharePoint 2007 with emphasis on these features: Document management, Check in/Check out, Versioning control and Authoring. 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.
For more information on the Sailor to Engineer program, please visit http://www.phdnswc.navy.mil/Pages/What_We_Do/DistanceSupport/SailorToEngineer/Default.aspx
Download the US Navy JDSR Case Study.
ISLE (Integrated Shipboard Learning Environment)
One of the toughest challenges for the Navy is maintaining equitable access opportunities for all sailors with respect to training, education and personal and professional growth. It’s difficult to provide the same opportunities to sailors stationed “boots-on-the-ground” in Iraq or in the middle of the Indian Ocean that they would enjoy if stationed ashore in Norfolk, Va.
Navy Knowledge Online (NKO), managed by the Naval Education and Training Command (NETC) in Pensacola, Fla., is the Navy’s portal for education, training and professional development opportunities throughout the entire workforce.
According to the NKO program manager, the Web portal is part of the training, education and career-management system that supports the growth and development of Navy personnel, which enables the Navy’s joint war fighting ability. “The Navy is integrating manpower, personnel, training and education (MPT&E) into a single enterprise to create a more agile and responsive organization,” said Peg David, NKO program manager for NETC. “Our goal is to create a Navy in which all sailors — active, reserve, afloat, ashore and civilian — are optimally recruited, trained and assigned so they contribute their fullest to mission accomplishment.
Once a month 4 million files via Distance Support are updated to the fleet over a low bandwidth satellite from Pensacola, FL, then to the ships. Ships and submarines have a Navy Sea Systems (NAVSEA) distance support server which contains education, training and other personal and professional development, and career management programs. A Sailor on board ship interacts only with the local onboard server and the WAN is not needed to access the satellite. For example, the local server will host most Navy e-Learning courses. From the sailor’s perspective, he or she interacts with the onboard learning system in real time. After a course is completed, that data will be transmitted off the ship where the sailor’s electronic training jacket (ETJ) is held. New courses are added easily allowing the program to grow as well as the Sailor’s personal and professional growth. Sailors at sea thus have the same opportunity to take classes as their shore based counterparts.
Distance Support NKO (Navy Knowledge Online)
Track the Training
After sailors have taken their training, files of courses completed are sent to Chula Vista, CA. This is done weekly for surface ship, and for submarines when able but at least monthly. In fact in June 2007, 22,775 course completions occurred that month alone. These files are put into the Sailor’s “jacket” and affect more than just a check-off box of a course completion. Promotions, Advanced training opportunities and the tracking of training on each ship is enabled by this process. These are essential business processes that the Sailor has come to expect and the Navy now needs in this age of extended deployments and shortened home port stays.
Sea Warrrior
The last element of NKO for the Sailor and the Navy is finding the correct career fit for both the Sailor and the Navy. The Sea Warrior Program will fully develop Sailors “who are highly skilled, powerfully motivated and optimally employed for mission success.”
With one click of the mouse while logged on to the Navy Knowledge Online (NKO) Web site, Sailors can literally do one-stop shopping, learning about their Navy jobs, how they stack up with other Sailors in the field, what they need to do to help their chances to advance, and much more. Sea Warrior is about looking backwards at the courses a Sailor has taken and planning forward for courses that will, ultimately, allow the Sailor to control his/her career.
Infonic Geo-replicator transports these files to and from the ships on a regular basis over low bandwidth satellites ensuring that with its patented Epsilon replication technology only the bytes that have changed are transmitted, providing optimized bandwidth utilization.
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.
