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Example research essay topic: Carnival General Information And Company Overview - 1,418 words

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... Many of the manual tasks have been automated. File Surf has eliminated a lot of aggravation for everyone and freed up time to do more important work, Espinosa said. Carnival Cruise Lines Industry: Cruise Ship Lines Each year, hundreds of thousands of passengers board one of Carnival Cruise Lines' 14 ships to enjoy a vacation of cruising and stopping at exotic ports of call in the Bahamas, Caribbean, Mexican Riviera, Hawaii, or Alaska. The passengers' goal is simple: to relax and enjoy themselves. Carnival's goal is to make sure passengers get their wish, but doing so is far from simple.

Carnival must not only plan trip itineraries and on-board activities to delight a diverse passenger base, they must also manage a complex business that essentially includes more than a dozen floating, moving "branch offices. " To ensure that the company succeeds in running its business tightly and efficiently, Carnival uses Microsoft BackOffice Server to simplify and streamline its communications and information management. Floating Regional Offices Carnival Cruise Lines began operations in 1972 with a single ship, the Mardi Gras. From there, it developed its "Fun Ship" brand, offering cruises designed for people of all ages and backgrounds. The Mardi Gras has since been retired, but to date Carnival has amassed a fleet of 14 ships, ranging from the 1, 022 -passenger Tropical to the newest member, the massive 2, 766 -passenger Carnival Triumph. Passengers take 3 - to 16 -day cruises in the Bahamas, Caribbean, Mexican Riviera, Panama Canal, Hawaii, and Alaska. Carnival Cruise Lines, based in Miami, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Carnival Corporation, the world's largest and most profitable cruise company.

For its own part, Carnival Cruise Lines has become the largest, most popular, and most profitable cruise line in the world. To the normal challenges of running a multi-billion dollar company, the cruise line business adds an unusual twist: the company's "regional offices" are literally floating around the sea most of the time. Coordinating and managing these moving targets, while maintaining the highest quality of customer service for passengers, requires solid technological solutions. BackOffice Products Form the Core of Carnival's Technology Computer technology has played a crucial role in Carnival's operations from the beginning, but until recently, the company mixed multiple technologies and applications. In early 1999, Carnival decided to unify its business operations using the Microsoft BackOffice Server Suite, in order to speed and simplify the installation, management, and update of software applications and to smooth IT operations. Carnival Cruise Lines has 18 servers running on Microsoft BackOffice Server one on each ship, plus others in the company's headquarters in Miami; offices in Los Angeles, Orlando, and Puerto Rico; and soon in shipyards in Italy and Finland with Microsoft Windows NT Server 4. 0 and its Internet Information Server (IIS) 4. 0; Microsoft Exchange Server 5. 5; Microsoft SQL Server 6. 5, Microsoft Proxy Server 2. 0, and Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 1. 2 installed.

Shipboard hardware consists of Compaq ProLiant 3000 servers; shore side systems are a mixture of Compaq ProLiant and Dell PowerEdge servers. The BackOffice products integrate seamlessly with Carnival's desktop applications, notably Microsoft Office. All shipboard PCs, and most of the shore side PCs, have Microsoft Office applications for general office productivity. Carnival's IS staff found it easy, for instance, to enable users to easily find the database information they need using Microsoft Access on their PCs to mine SQL Server data, and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to display and analyze the information.

In addition to cohesive integration with desktop applications, Carnival's decision to replace some third-party server applications with BackOffice Server Suite products also reflects the company's successful track record with their existing BackOffice products. "We have been using various BackOffice Server products for quite a while, and we were impressed with their performance and near-perfect reliability, " says Larry Gonzalez, Senior Systems Analyst with the Information Services department at Carnival Cruise Lines. E-Mail Messaging Crucial to Carnival's Communications Of particular importance to Carnival is Exchange Server, which the company relies upon for messaging between shore side and shipboard operations. Each ship is linked by satellite to a communications network powered by Exchange Server. "E-mail messaging is very important to our operations, " says Gonzalez. "The captains and administrators complain bitterly if they don't get their e-mail for some reason. And the company has found that e-mail is by far the best way to communicate between ship and shore. " For example, Carnival Cruise Lines uses e-mail to communicate passenger information and updates for each cruise, such as transmitting passenger manifest information, or notifying a ship that some passengers' flights will be late or that they have changed their preference for dining room seating time.

In all, approximately 1, 800 Carnival shore side users and 680 total shipboard users take advantage of e-mail through Exchange Server. "We consider e-mail communications to be mission-critical to our operations, and Exchange Server has delivered the reliability we need, with 99. 9 percent uptime, " says Gonzalez. "We see Exchange Server as essential to our operations. " Keeping Track of Weather For an ocean-going vessel with hundreds or thousands of passengers and crew members, anticipating weather conditions goes well beyond an interesting topic for idle conversation. Ship captains must have up-to-date information on the weather where they " re headed, and Exchange Server plays a crucial role here, too. Orion, a service of Weather News Inc. , sends e-mail messages containing critical weather data to the ships numerous times per day. "Exchange Server reliably delivers these Orion message, mixed in the normal e-mail traffic, over satellite connections to the ships, " explains Gonzalez. "Orion Exchange scripts, which we wrote using Microsoft Event Scripting Agent for Exchange, automatically unpacks the attachments and allows the weather data to be viewed by the ship's officers. " In addition, captains and ship officers frequently check Internet weather sites to receive updated information, especially if storms, hurricanes, or other problems are likely. Faster Software Installation and Updates Until recently, distributing or updating software onboard the Carnival ships required that someone from the corporate IS department physically board the ship, either in port or at sea.

Obviously, this requirement for in-person assistance meant that any additions or changes to the ships's oftware had to be carefully planned, and often ships would have to wait for hours or days before the work could be started. "Systems Management Server (SMS) has helped us tremendously with software distribution, " says Gonzalez. "It has made it simple to deploy software to distant, moving locations. We can now remotely distribute or update applications, or customize them to meet new or individual requirements, without physically boarding the ships. This has saved us enormous time, not to mention costs. " Specifically, the time for installing a ship's BackOffice Server system with SMS went from a several-day operation to a matter of hours. In conjunction with the SMS database, Carnival uses SQL Server. In the shore side offices, they use SQL Server to handle functions such as payroll and booking passenger flights, which is part of Carnival's complete travel services. SQL Server is also an integral part of the company's newly launched Internet Booking Engine, which allows passengers to book their cruises on-line. "As soon as we have time, we plan to experiment with more of the features of BackOffice Server, such as the integrated setup, " says Gonzalez. "We also want to expand our use of SQL Server to other database needs. " Clear Sailing Ahead Carnival intends to keep building on the advantages especially the convenience and efficiency it has experienced with BackOffice Server products by upgrading to new versions of the software as they become available.

For instance, an upcoming release of Exchange Server will simplify e-mail administration even further, and will enable Carnival's IS staff to administer the e-mail system in real time from a shore side office, without having to connect remotely to the ships. "We hope to use many upcoming features of BackOffice Server as soon as we " ve thoroughly tested them in our operations and make sure we understand every portion of them, " says Gonzalez. "Anything that makes our work easier and makes life easier on the user, we " ll certainly use. "More broadly, we expect that adopting the BackOffice Server Suite will lead to lower overall total cost of ownership for our information technology, as well as greater operating efficiencies as the integrated applications work together essentially as a single application, " he says.


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Research essay sample on Carnival General Information And Company Overview

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