The Logistics Challenge

The Good News: With the advent of data capture and transmission technologies such as bar coding, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), wireless networking, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), businesses now have a staggering volume of ultra-precise logistical data at their disposal.

The Bad News: Finding a way to deliver timely, coherent access and reporting against such massive data stores without encountering severe performance issues or incurring exorbitant costs has become a formidable challenge, especially in light of ongoing IT challenges such as:

• Siloed information systems, with logistics data spread across myriad internal and external business applications, databases and live logistical feeds,
• Escalating demand for access to already strained systems, and
• Deteriorating performance and usability as the scale and complexity of underlying systems increases.

Exalead's Solution

Deploying CloudView alongside your existing systems can eliminate many of these barriers quickly, inexpensively, and painlessly. CloudView search-based technologies can provide unified, real-time access to logistics data, regardless of source or volume, and deliver it online with Web-style speed and simplicity—all in only a few weeks, with no impact on existing systems, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional technologies.

A New Use for a Familiar Tool

CloudView search-based applications (SBAs) leverage a familiar tool, the search engine, in a new way. In a CloudView SBAs, primary information access is shifted from databases to the CloudView search engine index. This dramatically boosts performance as CloudView is expressly designed for fast information access ('read' operations) by vast numbers of users against massive data volumes. Accordingly, it delivers information access with the simplicity and speed of a consumer Web engine. But, unlike a consumer engine, CloudView can retain, exploit, and even enrich the complex categorization and classification information contained in relational databases, making it ideal for business application development.

Advantages for IT

• Unlimited, Low-Cost Scaling: Scale in users and available data without scaling underlying database systems; simply add low cost servers as needed
• Vastly Improved Performance: Ensure maximum availability and deliver sub-second responsiveness regardless of data volume or number of users
• Real-Time Data: Instantly go from serving day-old data to delivering real-time information using incremental index updates

Latency and Costs Slashed

Deploying CloudView alongside its existing IT infrastructure enabled Gefco to cut data latency from 24 hours to 15 minutes, and to cut its cost per user 50%. "Why didn't anyone think of this before?... Every day, I see thousands of events consolidated in real-time and I log on to the system just to be sure it's real!... The stability and performance of the application is astonishing given its highly innovative character."

– Guillaume Rabier, Manager of IT Research and Projects, Gefco
Gefco Case Study
Gefco Wins CIO Innovation Prize
Gefco Video

• 'Virtual' Data Integration: Provide a Web-based, federated view of data (including even unstructured data) without painful physical data integration
• Rapid Deployment: Deploy new applications and services in weeks, with no end user training
• Democratized Access: Deliver "do-it-yourself" search, access and reporting that is so simple and familiar you can extend access to operational field staff regardless of their technical skill level

Advantages for Logistics Operations Managers

• Better Track and Trace: More accurate and timely data concerning the movement of goods
• Improved Warehousing and Distribution: Timelier inventory data and extended supply chain visibility
• Greater Reactivity: Real-time operational reporting and business intelligence for greater reactivity in in detecting and responding to exceptional events and disruptions
• Simplified Search: Easy data lookups using a single text box and less structured identifiers

Advantages for Executive Management

• Enhanced Competitiveness: Open visibility for partners and customers for select information, and an enhancement of your reputation as an industry innovator
• Improved Decision Making: A federated view of information and real-time operational dashboards based on unlimited criteria for better decision making and more accurate financial reporting
• Improved Productivity: Increased efficiency and reactivity for operational and support staff
• Lower Costs: Reduced operational, training, development and IT infrastructure costs

CloudView-powered Synaxio Analytics aggregates data across an entire postal organization, extracting data from business systems, datawarehouses, and production equipment like sorting machines to produce a highly visual, simple-to-use Web application that monitors and reports on millions of daily events—in real-time and with sub-second responsiveness. Download the Synaxio brochure Operational Business Intelligence for Postal Operators

Related Resources

• Exalead CloudView for Logistics, (Solutions Brief)
• Gefco Case Study
• Gefco CIO Innovation Prize Article
• Gefco Video
• Synaxio Operational Business Intelligence for Postal Operators
• Achieving Business Agility with Search-Based Technologies (Whitepaper)
• Get More Out of Your Databases with SBAs (Solutions Brief)
• Search-Based Applications (Solutions Brief)