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ICS/Zulunet Revolutionizes Air Cargo Industry Columbia,
Md., April 15, 2001 --
Interface & Control Systems (ICS) announced today that it has teamed
up with air cargo industry leaders Zulunet and CargoReservations.com to
provide real-time, intelligent, automated tracking capabilities for the
air cargo industry “We are always
looking for applications that require intelligence, automation, and
real-time data processing,” explains ICS VP of Marketing Brian
Buckley. “To us, data is data. At a very basic level there is very
little difference between processing satellite telemetry and processing
transaction data from a web-page.”
ICS’s e-business product is called eSCL. “We were looking for
a way to help traditional businesses adapt to the Internet
environment,” says Buckley. “Using eSCL’s fully integrated
scripting language, we can capture business practices, policies, and
procedures in what we call Business Rules.” Business Rules are
simple segments of conditional logic, if…then statements, to
create potentially complex decision-making constructs. “Most, if not
all business decisions within a company can ultimately be captured in
one or more Business Rules,” continues Buckley. “We have designed
our suite of tools to make it as easy as possible to create, modify, and
update these Business Rules, which make up what we call the Knowledge
Base for a particular application”. Naturally, each
company has its own way of doing business and would therefore tailor its
own unique knowledge-base. As practices change, which they often do, it
becomes much easier to modify the applicable Business Rules and not have
to worry about affecting the remainder of the application.
Traditionally, many discrete components have been created to
manage an enterprise solution, eSCL centralizes this knowledge into a
processing engine which has supervisory control over multiple databases
and one or more real-time data feeds.
The ability to modify a business rule that applies to many
transactions decreases the product maintenance and allows for an agile
deployment strategy and an evolutionary approach to fielding a system.
Responses to customer feedback can be incorporated rapidly and
consistently. “Using a Business
Rules approach, eSCL creates a clear separation between business logic
and procedural logic,” explains Buckley. “This allows applications
to adapt and change easily and quickly to changes in business practices.
We believe that companies who are able to develop and deploy systems
rapidly have a clear competitive advantage in today’s e-business
marketplace.” At the heart of eSCL
is a real-time inference engine that processes Business Rules. As
external data is processed by eSCL, any changes or updates to this data
causes “events” to be processed by the inference engine. These
events are intimately tied to Business Rules so that only those Rules
related to the event are processed. Of
course, most Business Rules concerning logistics would require many
decisions based on any number of data sources. The point here is that
eSCL can dynamically determine the value, or state, of
“shipment” and make intelligent decisions based on that state. Intelligent
Cargo Tracking
CargoReservations.com is the first functional module of Zulunet, the open, neutral Supply Chain Management Internet portal. CargoReservations.com was conceived of and implemented to provide an Internet-based real-time exchange for buying and selling charter aircraft flights. “It was immediately obvious to us that eSCL could provide automated, real-time processing of events as they take place throughout the supply chain,” explains Glen Gates VP of Marketing for CargoReservations.com. As former Director of Charter & Contract Services for DHL and with over 20 years experience in international air cargo, freight forwarding, logistics, and flight operations, Glen is recognized around the globe for his expertise. “There
are many events that occur from when a piece of cargo leaves its origin to
when it finally arrives at its destination. The ability to intelligently
track these events, monitor any discrepancies, and alert the appropriate
parties offers tremendous value across the entire supply chain”, added
Ian Craig, COO Zulunet. Working closely with
Zulunet and CargoReservations.com, ICS developed a system using eSCL that
provides supervisory control of multiple data sources and allows
intelligent, automated, real-time tracking and analysis of events
throughout the entire supply chain. “It was a perfect fit for eSCL,”
says Buckley. “We provided the missing link in supply chain optimization
and were able to help CargoReservations.com close the loop between buyer
and seller.” The emergence of
CargoReservations.com and Zulunet onto the air cargo industry playing
field has created a revolution in the online marketplace. "Until now,
the air cargo/charter industry has been resisting the B2B Internet
revolution because booking air freight requires extensive negotiation on
price, examination of flight schedules and a long trail of paper,"
Gates said. "CargoReservations.com allows each of these steps to take
place in an open, neutral environment, online in real-time, creating
tremendous time and cost savings for carriers, charter brokers and
forwarders. The added capability to intelligently track cargo has totally
distinguished us from other competitors in the field.” The Next Step
Concludes Buckley, “We
are all very excited about our entrance into the world of e-business. Our
alliance with Zulunet and CargoReservations.com has opened a whole new
marketplace for ICS. We are already developing alliances with a number of
e-commerce enterprises that require intelligent
automated workflows to complex decision-making capabilities.” As
the service offerings of companies become more and more sophisticated, the
Business Intelligence products such as eSCL take on a whole new role.
Business Intelligence tools allow a company to field an
intelligent, automated system and solicit feedback for customers and focus
groups. Based on this
response, the system can quickly adapt to new business logic and features
giving the service provider a significant competitive advantage in the
marketplace About CargoReservations.comCargoReservations.com
is the first functional module of Zulunet, the open, neutral Supply Chain
Management Internet portal. CargoReservations.com was conceived and
implemented to provide an Internet based real-time exchange for buying and
selling charter aircraft flights. The CargoReservations.com service will allow: • Carriers, Integrators and Charter Managers (sellers) to register available aircraft including those that terminate each morning from scheduled overnight express operations, publish ad-hoc availability to buyers and to provide ad-hoc responses to specific requests from shippers for such aircraft; • Forwarders, Integrators, Charter Managers, Carriers and Shippers (buyers) to search for suitable scheduled feeder or ad-hoc charters in the registered availability, receive published ad-hoc availability from sellers, publish requests for availability to sellers and negotiate on-line with selected carriers or charter managers to acquire charter aircraft; • Both parties to manage the process from search and ordering to completion of the charter and to record all related transactions; • CargoReservations.com™ staff, where requested by a buyer or seller, to assist in the successful conclusion of a charter. For
more information about CargoReservations.com and Zulunet, visit www.zulunet.net
or call us at (877) ZULUNET. ICS
is a Product Development and Engineering Services Company specializing in
the development of real-time, embedded, and autonomous command and control
software systems. Services include software systems engineering,
integration and test, intelligent e-Business solutions, and project and
software life cycle management. ICS is a privately held company with main
offices in Columbia, MD, and Melbourne, FL. -
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