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The Voyager of the Seas, at 142,000 gross tons, is the second largest passenger ship in the world and something of an engineering marvel, according to owner Royal Caribbean International (Miami, FL).
This flagship vessel is over 1,000 feet long and better than 150 feet wide with fourteen passenger decks, and it boasts amenities that would puzzle the old-time seafarer: an ice-skating rink, a rock-climbing wall, a miniature golf course, and a four-deck-high shopping mall.
Carrying some 3,800 passengers and a crew of 1,200, the ship is essentially a large floating resort. The fact that it offers the largest gambling casino of any cruise ship in the world just adds to its unique IT challenges.
Farzad heads up shipboard IT
Farzad, who uses only the one name, is IT operations manager for the ship. He and his three assistants manage all shipboard IT except for navigation.
"We're involved in the day-to-day ops of electronic data processes, running the helpdesk and first-level troubleshooting," he explains. That also includes installing software and maintaining the system.
The onboard IT system is involved in almost every function on the ship. Farzad and his team support more than thirty servers, 150 workstations and 100 point-of-sale (POS) terminals, with a user base of 250-plus and more than 100 software apps.
The team controls the backbone system for the casino and all financial information for the casino and other areas, the POS system, the access control system, passenger and crew connections in the Internet cafˇ, satellite communications, interactive TV and the ship's huge food and beverage inventory. There's also a marine inventory system that catalogs over a million parts for ship maintenance and repair.
Then there's the essential security component. Royal Caribbean approaches that with its Seapass card, which provides positive ID for each passenger. The card also does duty as a shipboard credit card and room key, and is tied into an individual folio for each passenger which includes a photograph and citizenship information. In the few hours between the end of one cruise and the beginning of the next, Farzad notes, all 3,000-plus folios must be closed out and replaced with new ones.
The Seapass system, along with payroll and crew scheduling, is part of a property management system that runs on Unix. And all shipboard systems must interface with each other and with Miami HQ, communicating via a C-band satellite system.
Quite a challenge! Fortunately, Farzad comes well prepared. He has a 1991 BS in physics from the University of Mumbai, India and a 1992 BS in computer hardware engineering from the International University (Independence, MO), which specializes in distance learning.
Farzad worked as a customer engineer for Datamatics Ltd in India, installing and troubleshooting computers and operating systems. He joined Royal Caribbean in 1997, beginning as a systems specialist on a smaller ship, then systems manager, and working up to his Voyager post.
Life aboard
"Life onboard is very well regulated, and our world is clean and efficient," Farzad notes. He arrives at his shipboard office at 8:30 in the morning, checks and follows up on any help requests that came in overnight, meets with his assistants, and at noon he's off until 4:00, when he returns to work until 8:00 pm.
Of course, "When emergencies crop up we have to step in, so I'm always on call." He works seven days a week for four months, then gets two months off. And part of the time Farzad's wife lives with him onboard.
"I'm an officer and I have three stripes," he explains. "How long someone can stay onboard with you depends on the number of stripes you have." Farzad has his own cabin suite: a living room and bedroom.
The 1,200 ship's crewmembers have their own disco, bar, general store, movie theater, gym, sunbathing area, dining room and library. A training manager is assigned to each ship in the fleet, so "Leadership training is available to every crewmember," Farzad says. "Royal Caribbean places a strong emphasis on professional development and personal advancement.
"The diversity here is amazing," he notes. "Crewmembers come from sixty-three nations. On my IT team one member is from South Africa, one from Trinidad and Tobago and the third from the Philippines, and I'm from India."
Denise Walker heads up shoreside supply chain and finance
Denise Walker is portfolio manager for supply chain and financial systems at Royal Caribbean's shoreside HQ. The IT function supports both Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises, a fleet of twenty-nine ships.
Walker heads a team of six analysts who maintain the current systems and enhance or implement new ones. "We manage projects through the entire life cycle," she says. That includes requirements gathering, scope definition, timely delivery of product, and system testing for both ship and shore systems.
The team is ten months into a new organizational structure that aligns systems based on functionality rather than ship or shore. All systems, including fleet-wide inventory and purchase of food and beverages, POS and all financials, must interface and feed into each other efficiently.
A computer family
Walker was born in London, England and grew up in Jamaica. She received a degree in mass communication management from Florida International University in 1991. "I come from a computer family," she says. "Everyone in my family does something in the industry."
After graduating, Walker worked in computer training and apps support. Then she became a systems admin for Interim (Fort Lauderdale, FL), a consulting firm.
She joined Royal Caribbean as a systems analyst in 1999. She moved into systems integration, working on the IT new-build team developing systems for new ships, and then became a project manager.
Shore-to-ship challenges
"Deploying just the simplest system to a ship can be challenging," Walker notes. "There is just the one line for all communications and it all goes over C-band. We're moving more and more toward paperless systems, but ultimately it all has to integrate with our current systems.
"With half our user base on ships, we look for solutions that will work efficiently over C-band. It's a real challenge."
Then there are language and cultural issues. "Plus we're working with an ever-changing contract-based workforce, so there are always new users that have to be trained. Systems have to be easy to use. It's very challenging."
Walker on shore, like Farzad at sea, seems up for the challenge.
D/C
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