By ADAM GIFFORD
When large parts of Queensland were flooded this summer, Auckland-based systems integrator Econz had reason to be concerned.
It had just gone live in December with its first major offshore project, upgrading the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland's computer-aided dispatch system.
With many roads flooded and crisis conditions prevailing, the
new system handled peak loads of more than 3000 calls a day with no problems.
"It was a good confidence booster in that we were waiting for a big day to do some serious throughput measurements, and it performed extremely well," said Econz managing director Roly Rogers.
The implementation had led to "nibbles" from automobile associations in other states, he said.
Phase one of the Queensland project was worth $2 million to Econz, and involved building a new system with a Windows desktop using an Oracle database running on Sun servers and the QNX real time operating system.
As well as being easier to use than the club's old system, the Windows interface and database-driven system means records are more available so management can use it to tune the business.
The second phase now under way involves enhancing the software to further speed up transmission of information to the club's road service providers.
Instead of a text-based system, dispatchers will do most of their work using the mouse on the graphic interface. The mapping screen displays icons of patrols and jobs.
In the new version the operator will drag an icon of a breakdown truck onto the icon of a broken down car. The system will automatically dispatch the appropriate breakdown vehicle by sending the data to a screen in the truck.
It will also automate much of the dispatch function, with the computer deciding which patrol to send to a particular job, depending on location, the required skills, the time the customer has been waiting and whether a four-wheel drive or other off-road vehicle is required. The project is due to be completed within six months.
"The major thing we learned from this project is we can interact with and support overseas operations as well as we can support local ones. We now see we have a global market for specialised products," said Mr Rogers.
Econz had a busy summer with its technology also being used to get data on position, wind speed and wind direction from the America's Cup yachts back to a host computer at its Newton office. From there it was fed to Animation Research to do the Virtual Spectator animations.
