!5P! Managing the data Technology Infrastructure of the Queen Mary 2

In 1839 Samuel Cunard created The British and North American Steam Packet Company, known as the Cunard Line, to deliver Royal Mail to Canada and the U.S. (Cunard, n.d.). Originally composed of 4 paddle steamer ships, it would not be until the late 1940's though that the Cunard name would be etched synonymously with excellent capability transatlantic passenger cruises. By the 1950's, Cunard had a total of 12 cruise liners in assistance accounting for a total of one third of all transatlantic crossings (Cunard, n.d.).

With its greater speed and lower cost, air transit was quickly emerging as the beloved recipe of transatlantic travel while the 1960's (Wikipedia, n.d.). The Cunard cruise liners that clearly dominated the cruise industry a decade earlier were quickly becoming outmoded remnants of a bygone era. With the increased costs connected in operating the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, and faced with stiff competition from rivals like French Line's newly built Ss France, Cunard was reluctant to capitulate entirely on the cruise industry (Wikipedia, n.d.).

Cunard found a winner in an million gamble (Wikipedia, n.d.) straight through a exchange for the Queen Elizabeth called the Queen Elizabeth 2. On May 2, 1969, the Queen Elizabeth 2 made her maiden travel from Southampton, England to New York City and at once became the flagship for Cunard. Not only famous as one of the fastest seagoing vessels for her size, the Queen Elizabeth 2 was cheaper and smaller to control than her pre-war predecessors (Wikipedia, n.d.). Cunard managed to dynamically capitalize upon its lengthy historical brand recognition alongside the lowered costs connected with operating the Queen Elizabeth 2. The Queen Elizabeth 2 ultimately won a dire competitive benefit and reigned as the acceptable of transatlantic passenger crossings until 2004.

In spite of the notoriety of the Queen Elizabeth 2, Cunard gently weakened in each successive decade and became a enterprise with a fleet of old disparate liners by the 1990's. Carnival Cruises acquired the excellent 32% interest in Cunard in 1999 (Cunard, n.d.). The acquisition represented a marriage between refined British sophistication and the American wanderlust spirit. The successful Carnival Cruise Corporation revived the unwell inheritance of Cunard by selling off older liners and conducting needed overhauls on others.

Under the new leadership of Carnival Cruises, Cunard also began building on a liner that was of unprecedented proportion. Dubbed the Queen Mary 2, at a cost of over 0 million and a gross weight of over 150,000 tons, she was the most costly and heaviest vessel ever. Receiving much fanfare on her maiden travel from Southampton, England to Fort Lauderdale, Florida on January 12, 2004, the Queen Mary 2 was famous as naturally the grandest ocean liner in the world (Wikipedia, n.d.).

The Queen Mary 2 was designed to be an all-inclusive fully functioning entity unto itself, having the capability to function like a self-contained city (Datz, 2004). Providing every potential comfort ready on land and without forfeiting modern technology, The Queen Mary 2 evokes the opulence of a previous era for the 21st century. Needless to say, the incorporation of the information technology infrastructure of the Queen Mary 2 is naturally second to none.

From the occasion that guests first arrive for their departure, they have the capability to have their photo taken at the port's hotel, the concluding or the purser's office on board the ship. In addition, their prestige cards and passports are also scanned into the ship's asset management system. Their cards then in turn can be automatically used as their room key, a recipe of payment on board the ship, and identification for landing and boarding in lieu of carrying passports (Datz, 2004). All fall under the broad class of information technology as Transaction Processing Systems or Tps (Laudon & Laudon, 2006). Agreeing to Jeff Richman, director of enterprise solutions and applications improvement at Cunard, the Queen Mary 2 is the first cruise liner to offer those capabilities in a smart card (Datz, 2004).

In every stateroom the Queen Mary 2 also contains a dynamic television theory running Linux on set-top boxes from German multimedia company, Idf. These televisions enable passengers to send or receive email at .50 per transaction, order on-demand videos and opt from a total of 11 functional areas of interests such as classes, restaurants and shore excursions. The stateroom television point of sale (Pos) theory enables passengers of the Queen Mary 2 to not only book reservations, but also to shop online and keep a running total of the amount of money spent onboard (Datz, 2004). The capability to shop via an interactive television integrates the Tps theory to the Queen Mary 2's finance and accounting information theory to track cash flow (Laudon & Laudon, 2006). This theory ultimately benefits Cunard because it requires less citizen to voice than would a customary theory of crew handling private transactions and reservations. Also, the theory creates the opportunity to generate supplementary revenue for the ship (Datz, 2004).

The Queen Mary 2 has its operations town divided among three varied sites that back each other up within the ship. private systems of the ship are connected to the customary club operations town housing many servers, a Pbx communications theory and a public address theory that serves as the ship's primary safety theory (Datz, 2004). The core of the Queen Mary 2's information technology theory is the asset management theory which deals with both crew and passenger information. The asset management theory controls the ship's prestige based invoice theory in expanding to the boarding and disembarking manifests. Each private onboard information technology theory ultimately links to the asset management theory (Datz, 2004). The asset management theory lets the ship transmit crew and passenger rolls to the division of Homeland safety (Dhs), which involves airliners and cruise liners to submit that data prior to leaving and following advent (Datz, 2004). This enterprise theory or enterprise resource planning (Erp) theory enables a lone data structure serving enterprise wide incorporation and synchronization of prominent enterprise procedures (Laudon & Laudon, 2006).

Aboard the Queen Mary 2, Cunard also offers a theory called Avo for Avoid Verbal Orders. The ship's crew is able to article matters aboard the ship without having to pick up a phone or physically track man down. Using private personal computers, crewmembers can article faulty machinery aboard the ship directly to maintenance. Passengers also have the capability to tip off maintenance of any troubles they might be encounter via their stateroom televisions. From either, it is directly assigned to a maintenance worker where he or she can survey a agenda of repairs that must be done for that day. Repairs are completed in the order in which they are received, and afterward buyer assistance personnel can directly palpate passengers to see if problems were solved to their delight (Datz, 2004). Once again this aspect is an example of a Tps onboard the Queen Mary 2, due to the inputting of events into the theory and the coordination of operational level actions (Laudon & Laudon, 2006). The Avo theory on board the Queen Mary 2 is also connected with the ship's planned maintenance and purchasing system. Supervisors can rule from the data which repairs must take precedence over others (Datz, 2004). This aspect of the Avo theory therefore serves as a Decision preserve theory or Dss due to its utility in allowing managers to make primary decisions (Laudon & Laudon, 2006).

The Avo theory would not function without the integration of a wireless computer connection infrastructure. The Queen Mary 2 also uses Wi-Fi to link passenger orders in the restaurants from waitstaff terminals to receptors in the ceilings. They are then transmitted straight through cables directly to the galleys where the chefs view the orders on large monitors. In addition, at some of the bars the waitstaff use handheld computers to take orders that are wirelessly broadcast to the bartenders (Datz, 2004). At the operational level of taking orders from passengers, here the waitstaff use other form of Tps to transmit orders (Laudon & Laudon, 2006).

Finally and most importantly, the Queen Mary 2 also has a theory for dealing with problems that may arise in any of her shipboard systems. Every cruise has a total of three computer preserve officers to cope technical problems. Yet if they encounter a question that they naturally cannot handle, satellite links can supply instant communication directly to the It division at Cunard headquarters. Here the question can be handled distantly and does not need the cost and time connected with sending an specialist directly to the ship (Datz, 2004). This is an example of Cunard's Ess capabilities that can be used remotely to solve for a wide range of problems that could occur on the Queen Mary 2 (Laudon & Laudon, 2006).

Perhaps the main challenge faced by the It designers of the Queen Mary 2 was the unprecedented scale of the vessel. No cruise liner of this magnitude had ever been built and therefore no prior strategies could be used. primary concerns such as cable drops had to be planned from scratch by the It designers. Typically new ships are built into preexisting classes that already have designated plans for cable drops, but the Queen Mary 2 did not fit into any preexisting class. She had a total of nearly 2,500 data links located in private cabins and approximately 40 wireless points that all had to be planned down to exacting detail. The high degree of precision is due to the need to torch, weld, and cut into steel, then to fireproof the cables (Datz, 2004).

Development of an It theory was also compounded by the fact that it had been over three decades since the last Cunard cruise liner was built. The relative lack of familiarity with designing an entire It theory for the Queen Mary 2 was underscored by the lack of a distinct It division for shipbuilding as many competitors do (Datz, 2004). Nearly every facet of It production aboard the Queen Mary 2 had to be designed really from the ground up which presented designers with a unique opportunity to make creative solutions.

Another question connected with developing the It infrastructure of the Queen Mary 2 was a matter of geographical distance. As the actual ship was being constructed at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyards in France (Wikipedia, n.d.), Cunard advanced the It theory at its Miami headquarters. There the entire theory was set up, incorporated and checked then dismantled and shipped directly to France to be fully completed aboard the ship within three months, without the benefit of a working lift (Datz, 2004).

First, among the most prominent stakeholders for Cunard would be the passengers aboard the Queen Mary 2. This private group really must be carefully a top priority due to their capability to really keep the Queen Mary 2 afloat. If their needs and concerns are somehow not fully addressed, then they will most likely look elsewhere toward the competition. This is primarily the theorize why I think that the Queen Mary 2's It infrastructure was designed with their needs in mind. Everything from selecting activities to reporting repairs to maintenance to ordering room assistance was planned with ease of use. The performance of user-friendly touch screen stateroom televisions to cover all aspects of their travel increases the likelihood that they will enjoy their trip and return as repeat customers, recommending the palpate to their friends.

Second, other vital stakeholder group for Cunard would be the employees aboard the Queen Mary 2. They are an integral component in ensuring that passengers are thoroughly satisfied with the assistance they receive and will return. This is why I think such painstaking detail was paid to the improvement of the Avo and other Tps infrastructure aboard the Queen Mary 2. The Avo theory enhances the comprehensive capability of the passenger's palpate on the Queen Mary 2 by addressing maintenance issues approximately immediately and resolving them expeditiously. The Tps infrastructure creates ease of ordering whatever from a bouquet of flowers to a bottle of scotch directly from the comfort of the passenger's stateroom. I think that the employees of the Queen Mary 2 take great pride in being aboard the acceptable for transatlantic cruises and pay great attentiveness to the detail complex in their daily work.

Lastly, a third stakeholder group that was integral in the success of the Queen Mary 2 would have to be the Carnival Corporation. Often times when private organizations have differing strategies, mergers and acquisitions can help leverage the strengths so that the sum is far greater than their private parts. This is what apparently happened in the synergistic union between Cunard and Carnival. Prior to the acquisition by Carnival, Cunard was an club that was mired in its past. Carnival not only managed to breathe new capital into Cunard but also new life into Cunard's enterprise strategy. Carnival enabled Cunard to transform itself from a stodgy British club steeped in tradition into a vibrant team ultimately focused on the needs of the customer. I think that the organizational religious doctrine behind Carnival was instrumental in the improvement of not only the Queen Mary 2 but also her excellent It infrastructure.

The make of information technology aboard the Queen Mary 2 has shown that It has no longer become a secondary part of the shipbuilding business. Now more than ever, the 21st century has brought forth technological breakthroughs to focus on improving the customer's experience. The buyer palpate is ultimately what propels an club to behalf and to preserve its viability.
Long gone are the days when organizations could afford to have It come as an afterthought or worse yet, not at all. The successful implementation of excellent It capabilities must be a dynamic process that operates congruently with other divisions of the organization. private organizations must fully comprehend that they are ultimately doing a disservice to themselves and their clientele by not focusing deserved attentiveness on developing It.

As in the case of the Queen Mary 2, sometimes seemingly insurmountable obstacles can stand in the way of successful implementation of an It infrastructure. Yet the creativity and tenacity of the It designers did not let this become an obstacle. No previous designs were made on the scale of the Queen Mary 2. The It designers improvised. The testing facilities in Miami were thousands of miles away from the shipyards in France. The It designers had to make really distinct that the infrastructure would be compatible with the actual Queen Mary 2 in France. Ingenuity prevailed. The Queen Mary 2's It infrastructure was a resounding success and a model for the entire cruise industry.

Royal Caribbean is one of Cunard's chief competitors in the cruise industry. The Queen Mary 2's intricately woven It infrastructure has raised the benchmark by which all other It systems are measured. Royal Caribbean just launched the Mariner of the Seas in November 2003, and the Jewel of the Seas in April 2004. Both ships consolidate similar Pos, asset management systems, and wireless access areas for passengers. Royal Caribbean has attempted to capitalize on excellent It strengths in its own right, but falls slightly short of the advances on the Queen Mary 2. Unlike the Queen Mary 2, the smart cards used by Caribbean's ships do not consist of passport information. They are only used as room keys, identification and for purchases (Datz, 2004).

For passengers, Internet access aboard the Mariner of the Seas and the Jewel of the Seas is confined generally to each ship's open Internet cafés. Otherwise passengers can effortlessly access the Internet via their own laptop computers. access to the Internet is ready to the respective crews of both the Mariner of the Seas and the Jewel of the Seas straight through a thin-client device (Datz, 2004). In contrast, the ease of touch screen Internet access aboard the Queen Mary 2 offers passengers universal user-friendly Internet access for a nominal fee.

In the wake of the success of the Queen Mary 2, Royal Caribbean soon will unveil in May 2006 a grander vessel called the Ultra Voyager. With the capability to vehicle 3,600 passengers and weighing at close to 160,000 tons, Caribbean looks poised to give Cunard a run for its money.

I think that as we see Internet, satellite and telecommunications technology improve even supplementary in the 21st century, we will see more, good and faster use of It. Some potential areas where It could be advanced in the cruise industry might be:

· Wireless Internet access for all passengers and crew.

· Satellite television connections ready to private staterooms.

· Satellite videoconferencing for busy menagerial passengers.

· Satellite video telephones.

Cruise lines are pressured into retention up with the continuously changing environment to voice shop share. It is a primary asset for any organization. Cunard will continue to face many new challenges in the time to come and will need to use It to build upon the inheritance of Samuel Cunard for generations to come.