Anchors e-Way; New IBM Internet Appliances Christened at Sea; Royal Caribbean and IBM Give Crews Instant Access to the Web.Business Editors ABOARD THE RADIANCE OF THE SEAS Radiance of the Seas is a cruise ship that is owned and operated by Royal Caribbean International. She is registered in Nassau, Bahamas, and is a gas-turbine vessel, the first built for Royal Caribbean. , SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 15, 2001 In a cruise line A cruise line is a company that operates cruise ships. Cruise lines have a dual character; they are partly in the transportation business, and partly in the leisure entertainment business, a duality that carries down into the ships themselves, which have both a crew headed by the industry first, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange : IBM) and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines
Name Headquarters A'rosa Europe NCL America America AIDA Cruises Europe American Cruise Lines America (NYSE: RCL RCL - Reduced Control Language. A simplified job control language for OS360, translated to IBM JCL. "Reduced Control Language for Non- Professional Users", K. Appel in Command Languages, C. Unger ed, N-H 1973. ), the parent company of Royal Caribbean International Royal Caribbean International (OSE: RCL NYSE: RCL) is a Norwegian-American cruise ship company based in Miami, Florida. It is a brand of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., with 21 ships in service and one more under construction. All the ships have names ending in "of the Seas. and Celebrity Cruise Lines, are putting Internet access See how to access the Internet. in the employee cabins of Royal Caribbean International's newest ship, "Radiance of the Seas." Using IBM technology and the new IBM NetVista The IBM NetVista name has been used for several different products. Software Suite Introduced in April 1996 as a client-server software suite, with the server software running on OS/2, and the client software on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Internet Appliance Also called "information appliance," "smart appliance," and "Web appliance," it is a device specialized for accessing the Web and/or e-mail. Designed for ease of use, it plugs into a telephone jack or LAN connection for Internet hookup. , Royal Caribbean is giving its crew members -- who are at sea for months at a time -- on-board access to e-mail, Internet and productivity applications. In the initial phase of this "CrewNection" service, IBM installed 500 new NetVista Internet Appliances, with IBM embedded software Instructions that permanently reside in a ROM or flash memory chip. Embedded software may be immediately available to the CPU or, for faster execution, may be transferred to RAM first and then executed. , in crew cabins aboard the "Radiance of the Seas." Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines also plans to equip two additional ships with the CrewNection service before the end of the year, as part of a long-term strategy to equip all new additions to its fleet. Last year Royal Caribbean International teamed with IBM to become the first cruise line to outfit its entire fleet with Internet Cafes giving Internet access to all passengers. "Providing Internet connectivity for what is probably one of the most mobile workforces in the world is a significant challenge," said Michael Hulley, vice president, IBM Global Travel and Transportation Industry. "To develop the CrewNection service Royal Caribbean tapped into IBM's breadth of hardware, software and service capabilities to create a 'seaworthy e-business infrastructure' that will enable it to help keep crew productivity and morale up. The new IBM NetVista Internet Appliances are great for this application because they're easy to use and manage, reliable, and take up a relatively small space in the cabin." Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines currently has 22,000 employees servicing its fleet of 19 ships under its Royal Caribbean and Celebrity brands. The company projects that the number of onboard employees will grow to as much as 40,000 by 2005 as it adds an additional eight ships to its fleet over the next three years. "Hiring and retaining a stellar staff is crucial in the cruise line industry where the crew is our face to our customers," said Jack Williams
John (Jack) Henry Williams VC DCM MM & Bar (29 September 1886-7 March 1953), was a Welsh recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for , president of Royal Caribbean International. "Providing the cabin crew cabin crew cabin n (Aviat) → équipage m , many of whom spend up to six months at a time at sea, with the ability to e-mail home, take supplemental training courses and use basic office software in the comfort and privacy of their cabin, will enable them to stay connected -- both personally and professionally." "We see the CrewNection service becoming an essential tool -- not just for employees that want to stay in touch with family back home, but also for Royal Caribbean management to stay in touch with its family of employees," said Williams. For example, Royal Caribbean is developing plans to use the CrewNection service to provide training and orientation to employees, deliver real-time communications on a regular basis from corporate headquarters, and offer other additional services such as personal banking. The IBM NetVista Internet Appliance is a compact device designed to provide web-based computing in customized solutions for specific businesses and industries. It builds on IBM experience in networked, managed environments of Thin Clients and other devices. IBM's WebSphere Everyplace eve·ry·place adv. Informal Everywhere. Usage Note: The forms everyplace (or every place), anyplace (or any place), someplace (or some place), and no place Suite Embedded Edition software, which resides in the NetVista Internet Appliance, allows Royal Caribbean International to deliver virtually instant access to the Internet, Intranet, and business applications, without first requiring its crews to be trained on the use of PCs. It also allows for the smaller form factor of the device -- which is an important consideration in crew cabins where extra space is limited -- and it enables Royal Caribbean to manage all the devices from a central point, helping minimize the IT expertise and expense required to support the onboard devices. Additional IBM software used in the application includes: Tivoli Personalized Services Manager, which provides subscriber and device management across the ship's e-business infrastructure, VisualAge Micro Edition embedded Java(1) application development tools and IBM's J9 Virtual Machine. On the hardware side, Royal Caribbean has installed a Unix-based IBM server onboard the ship to run all the backend computing behind the CrewNection applications and handle upgrade and maintenance chores. IBM NetVista personal computers are also used by ship officers to perform managerial duties and connect to the network. IBM Global Services IBM Global Services is the world's largest business and technology services provider. It is the fastest growing part of IBM, with over 190,000 professionals serving customers in more than 160 countries. assisted Newbuild Solutions IT, Royal Caribbean's IT division focused on new ships under construction, in the integration of the project. IBM's Travel and Transportation Industry group provides a broad range of products, services and integrated solutions to all travel-related service areas including hotels, gaming, car rental companies, travel agents and tour operators -- as well as cruise lines. For more information, visit: http://www.ibm.com/industries/travel. "Radiance of the Seas," Royal Caribbean's newest cruise ship, represents an evolution of the cruise line's signature elements. The ship features the first billiards billiards, any one of a number of games played with a tapered, leather-tipped stick called a cue and various numbers of balls on a rectangular, cloth-covered slate table with raised and cushioned edges. tables at sea, Internet ports in every stateroom state·room n. A private cabin or compartment with sleeping accommodations on a ship or train. stateroom Noun 1. a private room on a ship 2. , a yacht-like design, glass elevators facing the sea, and the cruise industry's newest technology for protecting the environment. For more information about Royal Caribbean, please visit the company's Internet web site at http://www.royalcaribbean.com or http://rclinvestor.com. Photography Photographs of "Radiance of the Seas" are available at http://creative.rccl.com. Photographs of the IBM NetVista Internet Appliance in a "Radiance of the Seas" crew cabin are available at http://www.ibm.com/press/photo.nsf/photoview under "NetVista." Note to Editors The IBM NetVista Internet Appliance is a simple, compact device optimized for web-based computing. It provides web-based browsing, transactions, e-mail, and other applications. About the size of a framed 8-by-10 family photograph, the device is highly customizable, offering a personalized experience for end users, and is updated and managed from a remote server. This provides an appliance-like, hassle-free experience for the end user and simplified, low-cost maintenance for the service provider. The Internet Appliance is being brought to market through solution partners, including vertical industries (travel, finance, retail, health care), and telecommunications providers. These companies customize their portals and offerings to deliver unique business-to-business, business-to-employee or business-to-consumer solutions. IBM's WebSphere Everyplace Suite Embedded Edition is cross-platform, embedded middleware for devices that includes device/content management, connection management, communication, user interfaces, browsers (such as Opera's Web Browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. ), encryption, authentication and message queuing. It is integrated with standards-compliant real-time operating systems (such as QNX A multiuser, multitasking, real time operating system for PCs from QNX Software Systems, Ltd., Ottawa, Ontario (www.qnx.com), that is noted for its low-memory requirement and rapid response. Similar to Unix, it has been in use since the early 1980s. Neutrino neutrino (n  trē`nō) [Ital.,=little neutral (particle)], elementary particle with no electric charge and a very small mass emitted during the decay of certain other particles. ). Customization services are offered to tailor the embedded platform to the requirements of particular devices. In addition, IBM offers server software (WebSphere Everyplace Suite) that helps streamline delivery of Web-based information and applications to devices. The IBM WebSphere Everyplace Suite Embedded Edition is based on the Java programming language and uses open standards to create a highly flexible offering. It incorporates the necessary communication, application and user interfaces required for device operation. Tivoli Personalized Services Manager combines subscription, provisioning, and personalized services management with pervasive device management. With Tivoli Personalized Services Manager, businesses can create managed, personalized service environments accessible through a variety of devices. IBM VisualAge Micro Edition provides advanced embedded Java application development tools and IBM's implementation of runtime Java technology, the J9 Virtual Machine. IBM Servers feature mainframe-class reliability and scalability, broad support of open standards, and capacity on demand for managing the unprecedented demands of e-business. Footnotes The following terms are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both: IBM, NetVista, VisualAge, and Websphere. Tivoli is a trademark of Tivoli Systems Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both. 1. Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. |
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