Page 66: of Maritime Logistics Professional Magazine (Jul/Aug 2017)

65 3rd Cover

TECHNOLOGY growth and change, in- leader, driving innovation cluding the eventual intro- for how the industry itself duction of more systems may choose to adapt soft- into the operations mix. ware to meet the custom-

When considering multi- ers’ collective demands. system integration, two In the realm of inte- concerns many in IT have grated systems, we at is that as integrated systems Tideworks strive to build grow, we (a) reduce our standard APIs with in- understanding of failure tuitive fows, documented points – debugging issues ICDs, testable interfaces, can be complex if needing few “optional” felds, and to derive root cause by in- reusable “types” that sup- vestigating across multiple port vendor integrations

Panama’s Manzanillo International Terminal (MIT) sub-systems, and (b) frag- with our software solu- courtesy Tideworks ment data so it becomes tions. Ultimately, by pro- more complex to analyze. viding standardized APIs,

Both are valid concerns and related to how to apply data ana- our objective is that vendors with whom we integrate more lytics in a multi-system environment. The answer is, of course, easily in turn make our customers’ options more robust and dependent on the systems and vendors involved, but can be in- varied. Similarly, those vendors receive the beneft of a more formed by what was explored above. transparent and less costly partner in providing terminal sys-

First, when considering data analytics, the system at the hub tems and solutions. And, we build standardization to improve of the hub-and-spoke model (in this case the TOS products), is quality and reliability.

also the most informed about information fowing between sub- Even beyond the terminal operations space, broader in- systems, and thus is the most critical point for data analytics. dustry trends such as the progression towards the Internet of

Second, because each of these systems store and manage Things (IoT), increases in devices, improvements in machine data in structures that are most relevant to performing their learning and decision-making, and the application of technol- respective duties, it is important to have a higher-level data ogy across all realms have a common theme: integration. As platform that can sit above the systems to help aggregate, con- such, this journey toward intelligent integration and system solidate, cleanse, and otherwise present a unifed data picture automation is a road trip that has no end. As long as businesses across systems. continue to be asked to do more with less, there will always be a call for more innovation. And as long as there’s a call for

In Actual Practice more innovation, there will be a need for more integration.

Emerging data platforms can provide a 360-degree real-time The objective is simple: to offer secure, consistent, tested and historical view of performance from all operational areas APIs allowing customers to take full advantage of the trans- from a single dashboard. Panama’s Manzanillo International Ter- formational technologies available today and those that will be minal (MIT), for example, is using Tideworks Insight to identify available tomorrow, with a smaller price tag and faster up-time.

patterns and outliers so that it can quickly improve operations and reduce costs. In this case, the operator had source systems spread across a variety of TOS products, Billing and Financial,

Asset Management and Workforce Management Systems. Le-

The Author Tom Van Buskirk veraging Tideworks Insight as a platform built on TOS data, the is Vice President of Product Engineering at Tide- works Technology. He joined Tideworks in 2009 data platform was quickly expanded to provide a consolidated and oversees all software development and view leading to determinations of cost-per-move. The terminal quality assurance teams. Prior to his current po- can now also detect, in real-time, operational bottlenecks where sition, Tom led the development efforts for Main- data may be originating in a variety of source systems and react sail Vanguard, Tideworks’ next generation ter- to those bottlenecks dynamically.

minal management system. For nearly a decade,

The best technology partners serve as your trusted guide

Tom has pioneered and enhanced emerging across the technology landscape, seeking to be more than just software technologies, both as an engineer and innovator, focus- a vendor providing software solutions, but also as a thought ing primarily in Java, Flex, and N-Tier application development.

66 Maritime Logistics Professional July/August 2017 | |