Project log

Gati slashes dial-up costs

Gati is using the Citrix Metaframe Presentation Server to reduce the overheads associated with dial-up connectivity. G S Ravikumar, the chief information officer who was the brain behind the project, shares his experience

Gati is a leader in the express enterprise cargo industry, and a market leader in logistics. Its operations are spread across 350 locations in India. Of this, Gati has 250 direct offices and 100 offices through its franchisees. Overall, the company serves in 580 districts in India, employs 2,200 people directly, and has an additional 1,500 associates working for it. The logistics business is a 24x7 operation since customer consignments have to reach the destination on time.

Centralised architecture

The idea behind implementing the system was that all the applications running at Gati would be web-based, and would be able to talk to each other online in real-time G S Ravikumar Chief Information Officer Gati

In July 2003 we implemented a centralised system called Gati Enterprise Management System—gati@web—which was developed in association with Satyam Computers. The idea behind implementing the system was that all the applications running at Gati would be web-based, and would be able to talk to each other online in real-time. The ability to handle information in a real-time environment was critical for us to stay ahead of the competition. To achieve this, we had to have seamless information flow across our offices from a combination of leased line and dial-up connections that ran on local ISPs (Internet Service Providers) through gati@web. The advantage of the system was that any employee could walk into a cyber café and access applications such as ERP and CRM running on the system from anywhere in the country. This centralised system was linked to the 350 locations across India, out of which 125 locations were on leased-line connectivity and 215 were on dial-up connectivity through the local Internet Service Provider. The remaining 10 locations (such as Port Blair and Raxaul) were connected using VSATs. Through gati@web it was now possible for our offices to do web-based tracking of consignments, and have readily-available statements of pick-up and delivery.

Dial-up a loser

When gati@web was implemented it was a huge success, except in those locations where dial-up connectivity was erratic. There were frequent line isconnections and the response was very slow. There was regular disruption in the information flow, and users had to dial-up time and again to reach the page where the connection had dropped. The frequent disconnections added to the dial-up costs per location. There were concerns whether we had tested the dial-up connectivity before implementing gati@web; we had, but only in select cities and in larger locations where we did not face any problem. Post-implementation, we found that there were connectivity issues at smaller locations where the ISPs were not very strong. We thought of using an Excel sheet to pass on the information to and from remote locations, but this was not possible on a real-time basis.

CMPS the healer

Before installing the Citrix Metaframe Presentation Server (CMPS) to solve the dial-up connectivity problem, we called upon our experts, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), to run a pilot. The test product was installed by TCS within two hours, and we found CMPS to be highly effective in solving our problem. We saw that even if the dial-up connection went off, a user had the advantage of restarting from the same page where the connection stopped. This was because the user was shadowed by the system, and the actual screen was sitting at the corporate office. CMPS allowed the key source and the mouse click to travel from the server to the user, and hence there was no loss of package if there was a disconnection. In the case of VSAT connectivity, the bandwidth requirement came down substantially after CMPS was installed.

We also found that there was no need to install an SSL-based VPN as the Citrix architecture already has one. In addition, the shadowing property of a CMPS could help us in training a new franchisee on our gati@web because we could shadow whatever the new user did on the system. What’s more, there was no need to install high-end machines at remote locations because the actual activity happens at the CMPS server and it can support low-end PCs efficiently.

Our dial-up connectivity costs have gone down by 50 percent per location since the CMPS was installed. With it, we have a more efficient fleet movement across multiple locations without interruption; this facilitates faster operations in a secure environment.

There were a few initial problems, though. We found during the testing stage that the server did not work well enough with the Sun Solaris operating system for remote locations that use dial-up. We had to therefore install Windows 2003 in order to run the server to facilitate efficient dial-up connectivity at remote locations; this increased the implementation cost. We now have 100 concurrent-user licences of CMPS for our dial-up and VSAT users.

For tomorrow

We have presently restricted ourselves to 100 licences as there are no heavy users at remote locations, but we are exploring the possibility of using the Citrix Password Manager and the Conference Manager for the whole of our gati@web system. We may go in for additional Citrix licences in the near future, but at the moment we are happy with the system.