A seaport, just like an airport can be highly efficient by making use of state of the art technologies. This is what prompted Westport to make use of the technology to revolutionize the port industry in Malaysia.

Singapore used to be the load center of Malaysia and the transshipment hub of Southeast Asia. The emergence of Westport in 1996 Malaysia changed that as the new port had the technology, facilities and capacity to reverse the trend via Singapore.

And thanks to Westport, Port Klang, where Westport is located became among the busiest international container ports. It currently ranks as the 11th largest container port in the world.

Tackling Complexities

To facilitate it daily operations, Westport has 36 servers of all types, varying from workgroups to enterprise servers which are running a host of platforms from Sun Solaris, Windows 2000 to Linux operating systems.

Westport thus decided to deploy Sun Microsystems Sun Fire 12000 server to consolidate several of its database management systems into a single machine.Chan Chee Keong, Westport’s Chief Financial Officer says the purchase of the Sun Fire 120000, or Sun Fire 12k, serves as a new point of departure in terms of gathering, organizing, managing and sharing information, which are important to make Westport more efficient.

“With container volumes growing at more than 40 percent annually over the past two years, we find that we rapidly outgrow our hardware requirements, sometimes even for new hardware that is barely one year old,”

With the processing power and scalability of the Sun Fire 12k, the company believes that it should see better protection and more efficient utilization of its hardware investment for some time into the future.

Solution Deployment

Westport decided to hire external information and communications technology ICT consultant-Makmal Consulting Sdn Bhd to configure the Sun Fire 12k with eight UltraSparc III 900-megahertz processors, 12 gigabytes of random access memory and half terabyte of disk storage in a Sun StorEdge 3910 server.

The server has 12 domains where each is a separate machine by itself, allowing the port to have a maximum of 12 enterprise machines on a virtual basis. “What we have done is to segregate the domains in order to put in various applications for port, container operations and finance,” informs Makmal’s Chief Technology Officer Suman Menon.

The Sun Fire 12k will host the port’s next generation conventional cargo system (NGCCS), Financial Application System (Forte) and container management system (CMS). Operating on the Solaris operating environment, the system also includes an internal and external disaster recovery infrastructure, he says.

Given that machines become obsolete quickly, Suman adds that there appears to be a need for greater flexibility in terms of upgrade and maintenance options. The Sun Fire 12k with its Uniboard technology not only reduces significant amount of server downtime.

The consolidation project started in January this year and is now completed. There are seven phases for the deployment, informs Suman.

Phase one is the site preparation, an assessment exercise spanning over 22 days to study and feedback space allocation, and infrastructure prior to delivering the product. The second phase is the architecture consulting (14 days), which includes project introduction, systems storage review, network security and application review, design build specifications and client approval of design.

Other phases consist of logistics and delivery, installation and configuration, data protection, clustering and user acceptance test (UAT).

The company has reaped major benefits since implementation eight months ago, Suman says.

“From the technology aspect, it has worked as a centralized server, storage, application and database, thus increasing computing power and easing maintenance. Also, employees need not to be trained in various technologies. There is no longer the need for multi-tasking, and to be ‘jack-of-all-technologies. As a result, we have more employees being more specialized and have more expertise in technology domain,” he adds.

More to Come

Westport will continue to place a high degree of importance in the adoption of IT to have world-class productivity, stresses Chan.

“We invest significantly in IT, spending more than RM10 million annually on hardware and software. We are constantly seeking new ways to apply technology on our operations and business,” he says.

He claims that though Westport has been in existence for only about seven years, it is among the first in Asia to use a smartcard container gate system and among the first in the world with a computerized general cargo systems.

“Borrowing from Hutchison Hong Kong’s port expertise, we are the first port in Malaysia to implement the control tower concept for port operations, complete with remote CCTV and wireless narrow-band and spread-spectrum communications link” he adds.

To complete regionally with other world-class ports, Westport’s survival and prosperity are dependent on how efficient it is in planning for and moving containers on and off ships that call at the port. And this requires logistical speed and precision.

“Shipping lines make money from shipping containers across the sea, not idling at a port. They come where the ports are efficient,” Chan speaks on the challenges Westport faces in its quest to become a leader.

With the Sun fire servers, Westport is now in position to consolidate the multitude of hardware and software platforms into a seamless environment, he adds.

“We should see better optimization of some of our processes that have not been possible before this,” he says.

The project, costing RM5 million, is expected to generate return of investment within three years. This is the single largest IT expenditure for Westport at the moment, Chan reveals, but he says that there will be more in the medium term, as additional IT spending is expected for its vessel and yard-planning system.

“We are in the midst of enhancing our container yard-planning system, but at the same time we are also re-evaluating the present system. Or next major investment will be in container yard-planning systems,” he says.

According to a company statement, Westport’s container volume grew from just 21,000 containers in 1996 to 2.1 million containers in 2002. It hit 2.2 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) last year compared to 1.45 million in 2001.