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How Information Technology Supports the Queen Mary

A guest embarking on the Queen Mary 2—the world’s newest, biggest and most expensive ocean liner—pulls out her smart card ...

 

June 15, 2004CIO

A guest embarking on the Queen Mary 2—the world’s newest, biggest and most expensive ocean liner—pulls out her smart card and hands it to a smiling security officer in a crisp, white uniform, who scans her through. After settling into her cabin, she flicks on the digital interactive TV and fires off a couple of e-mails. A few clicks away she browses the evening’s dinner menu, then orders a bottle of pinot noir, which will be on her table when she arrives at the restaurant. Following some after-dinner entertainment in the theater, she heads back to her cabin, pipes in some Mozart from the TV system’s vast music library, orders room service for breakfast and falls asleep.

The $800 million QM2, built by Cunard Line, a unit of Carnival, weighs in at 151,400 tons and, at 1,132 feet, is a mere 116 feet shorter than the structural height of the Empire State Building. She’s the first Cunard cruise ship built in more than three decades, since the company launched the Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1969, and the only regularly scheduled cruise liner crossing the Atlantic. (The QE2 is now cruising in European waters.) The ship boasts 10 dining venues, a planetarium, a casino, a two-story theater and five swimming pools. Hot tubs and the Canyon Ranch Spa offer relief for muscles sore from shuffleboard. Some 1,250 crew members cater to upwards of 2,600 passengers, a cozy ratio for guests (most big ships have a considerably higher passenger to crew ratio). The QM2 made her maiden voyage, from Southampton, England, to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in January. In April, the QM2 sailed from Southampton to her U.S. home port of New York City, where she was greeted with a rousing welcome.

The smart cards and interactive TVs are just a couple of examples of the vast IT capabilities built into the behemoth. The QM2 is a floating city, with integrated systems that make it arguably the most technologically advanced vessel on the ocean. But incorporating IT onto the ship was far from smooth sailing. One of the biggest challenges facing Cunard’s IT department was its relative inexperience—the company hadn’t built a ship in more than 30 years and didn’t have a separate shipbuilding IT division as some cruise lines do. In addition, the QM2 was a new class of ship, so there was no preexisting design to help guide the IT leaders as they plotted major issues like cable drops. And to add more complexity to the mix, they didn’t have access to the ship (which was constructed in France) until late in the building process, so the staff had to construct a deployment center in Miami to build and test the systems. Recently, CIO was invited on board for a day to take a closer look at the IT powering Cunard’s newest member of the royal family and find out what sorts of challenges the company’s IT staff faced in designing and installing a technology infrastructure from the bottom up.

 
 
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WHITE PAPERS

Cost Effective Data Loss Prevention

Learn how Data Loss Prevention technologies can in fact be deployed in a cost effective manner.
 

Data Loss Prevention and Enterprise Rights Management

Enterprise Management Associates highlights the complementary values of Data Loss Prevention and Enterprise Rights Management as a strategic approach to information risk control.
 

Investing in Business Analytics Technology

Find the answers to your questions about business anyalytics initiatives.
 

Don't Sacrifice Speed

Learn how to ensure custom content is obtained in a fast manner and doesn't drive your customers away.
 

Document-Sharing Solutions

Examine the benefits and challenges that IT executives are facing and how they plan to control the changes.
 

Virtualization: Unparalleled Agility

VMware joined BMC Software to co-author 7 must-read tips for striking the perfect balance in your virtual environment.
 

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Webcast with Dan Vesset: Investing in Business Analytics Technology

What exactly is business analytics and why should you care? Dan Vesset of IDC and Gaurav Verma of SAS answer this a...
 

Capitalize on Your SAP Content

After 18 years of partnership and over 3,000 successful customer deployments, Open Text has become SAP's premier pa...
 

Enterprise Cloud Computing: Ready for Primetime?

The progression toward enterprise cloud computing is happening today, as industry leaders deploy technologies that ...
 

Preparing Your Business Services for the Future

Would you trust your network monitoring tools enough to know when something is truly halting a business service? Wh...
 

Enterprise System Management Challenges in Big Organizations with Eli Almog

In this Podcast with Eli Almog, Corporate Architect in BMC's CTO Office, discusses how IT managers can know when it...
 

BSM in the Field, Practical Insights from Peter Armaly

Have you thought about BSM, but haven't quite gotten the buy-in you need? Get down and dirty with BSM installations...
 

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