P&O Ferries is about to embark on a service-oriented
architecture (SOA) project it believes will pay for itself within
two years.
The ferry company, which carries 13 million passengers a year,
found many of its existing business applications were performing
similar functions, said Steve Simmons, head of architecture at
P&O Ferries.
Applications designed to perform tourist reservations, freight
booking and passenger check-in had much in common, he said. "Each
of the three applications has its own pricing system, ship
inventory management, sailing services and credit card
authorisation. There was a huge amount of duplication."
In a pilot that is due to start in the next few weeks, the
company will begin to move to a service-oriented architecture to
streamline applications. "What the SOA offers us is the opportunity
to take that duplication out and put in common services," said
Simmons. "The legacy code is offered as a service."
P&O has chosen Cape Clear's enterprise service bus (ESB)
software to manage the services.
ESB is an open standards-based messaging middleware that
provides secure interoperability between enterprise applications
via XML and web services interfaces.
This will be the first time an ESB has been deployed at sea and
on land in the same implementation, said Cape Clear.
Simmons said that by preserving investments in legacy
applications while moving to a new architecture, the project should
pay for itself within two years. He did not disclose the project's
cost.
Getting software engineers to adapt to the new environment was
more of a challenge than getting the technology to work, he
added.
"The technology has fallen into place fairly well - the
challenge has been changing the mindset. It's a new approach to
systems development - a shift in thought from having integrated
systems to individual services.
"Now the IT team is very enthusiastic about delivering the new
technology."