On the next episode of The Love Boat, a group of under-performing tech executives need to unwind and forget about past failures. To do that, they board the ship - and look for Love. <ggg>
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Princess Cruises Sets Sail With Revenue-Generating Call Center Based On 3Com High-Speed Gigabit Ethernet Systems
April 9, 1999 12:35 PM
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 9, 1999--
Ultra-Fast, Ultra-Reliable 3Com(R) Systems Power-Up Call Center and Streamline Cruise Line's Corporate Headquarters and Ship-Board Network Services
3Com Corporation COMS today announced that Princess Cruises, the world's leading upscale cruise line, has upgraded its revenue-generating call center network using advanced 3Com systems. The 700-user network relies on a Gigabit Ethernet backbone based on 3Com's next-generation CoreBuilder(R) 9000 enterprise switch, SuperStack(R) Fast Ethernet workgroup switches and Fast EtherLink(R) network interface cards. As the company's sole sales medium, the Valencia, Calif., call center network quickly and reliably processes Princess passenger bookings, including airline reservations. Princess is also standardizing its corporate office and shipboard networks on high-speed 3Com solutions, including Fast Ethernet, Layer 3 switched networks at its Century City, Calif., headquarters and on its new flagship, the Grand Princess.
Founded in 1965, Princess Cruises today is the third-largest cruise line in the world. Best known for TV's "Love Boat," Princess Cruises carried approximately 500,000 passengers to worldwide destinations in 1998. By 2001, Princess expects to serve 1,000,000 passengers per year. In response to surging demand for its upscale cruises, Princess recently added three new ships to its fleet, including the world's largest cruise ship, the 109,000-ton Grand Princess. Three more ships will be added by 2001. The company opened its Valencia customer service call center in November 1998, where it increased its call center staff to 400 representatives to handle growing passenger bookings.
Driven by its new 3Com-based network, Princess is expediting business-critical services at its call center, cruise ships and its corporate headquarters. Chief among these applications is the cruise line's new revenue-generating call center, which originates all of Princess's business and handles up to 15,000 calls per day. The call center network lets travel agents book Princess cruises for their clients on the phone or online via Princess' Cruise Reservation System network 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Princess passengers also routinely contact the call center for bookings and a full range of customer services. Profiting from the network's sub-second response times, call center agents use an IBM mainframe-based, in-house developed reservation system with built-in intelligence to quickly book cruise accommodations, Alaskan Cruise Tours and pre- and post-cruise hotel packages. The reservation system also allows agents to fulfill customer requests for airline connecting flights and arrange for passengers' special on-board needs.
The 3Com network also supports Princess's document imaging applications, enabling fast and convenient storage and retrieval of electronic invoices, passenger letters and other text documents. The network's scalable bandwidth is encouraging Princess to evaluate computer-telephony integration (CTI) solutions to further streamline passenger bookings. 3Com systems are also fueling back office applications in Princess's Century City headquarters where the 500-user 3Com network creates a stable, high-speed infrastructure for delivering the Oracle Financials application suite.
Princess is additionally using 3Com systems on four ships, including the Grand Princess whose new network streamlines at-sea operations. Instead of cash, passengers pay for all onboard extras such as cocktails and massages with Cruise Card, a credit card that records all passenger purchases via networked point-of-sale terminals. The network instantly transmits purchase data to the ship's data center, where clerks can easily access it to provide passengers' statements at the end of the cruise. The ship networks also run critical cruise support systems including immigration, customs processing and inventory control systems to ensure timely restocking and smooth entry into foreign countries.
"Our networks are absolutely critical to our business, from booking passenger reservations to servicing them aboard ship," said Ron Czarnecki, vice president of information systems for Princess. "Take our call center: if our network's down, we're not selling, which can cost us millions of dollars per day. Using fault-tolerant 3Com systems, our network services now run without interruption and we have an infrastructure that can scale up to support future applications such as computer telephony integration and multimedia."
Stable High-Performance Systems Ensure Smooth Sailing
Princess is counting on 3Com systems to handle the growing audience for its cruises, especially at its new Valencia call center. Prior to deploying the CoreBuilder 9000-based Gigabit Ethernet backbone at Valencia, Princess ran its call center and financial applications at Century City on 3Com Token Ring systems, which began replacing a Cabletron solution in 1995. During 1998, the cruise line began migrating the Century City network to a Gigabit Ethernet backbone based on the SuperStack II(R) 9300 and SuperStack II(R) 3300 switches running at 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps). Despite the stability and performance of the upgraded Century City network, the company's huge projected growth prompted it to build a new facility in Valencia devoted to customer service and call center activity.
Facing the need to support twice as many users as in Century City, Princess turned to the CoreBuilder 9000 switch based on 3Com's proven performance and reliability. "In 1995, we chose 3Com to replace our Cabletron equipment because 3Com had superior performance, reliability, prices and service," said Czarnecki. "Since then, we've standardized on 3Com systems because they consistently outperform their competitors while maintaining competitive prices. The CoreBuilder 9000 switch in our Valencia call center gives us instantaneous network response times and unmatched reliability."
Launched in November 1998, the Valencia call center is based on a single CoreBuilder 9000 enterprise switch with 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Ethernet connections to four CoreBuilder 3500 Layer 3 high-function switches. Equipped with dual power supplies and redundant switching engines, the CoreBuilder 9000 switch has 1 Gbps Ethernet connections to 50 SuperStack II 3300 switches. The enterprise switch also delivers 100 Mbps connections to an IBM ES 9000 mainframe, four IBM RS/6000 Unix servers and 20 IBM PC servers running Windows NT and NetWare. The CoreBuilder 3500 switches provide Layer 3 switching to 700 IBM and Dell desktops equipped with 3Com Fast EtherLink(R) 10/100 network interface cards running at either 10 or 100 Mbps speeds.
At Century City, Princess is supplanting its Token Ring network with a Gigabit Ethernet backbone consisting of one SuperStack II 9300 switch. The SuperStack II Switch 9300 has Gigabit Ethernet links to SuperStack II 1100 and 3300 switches in 10 wiring closets. On board the Grand Princess, the fiber-based Fast Ethernet backbone is made up of one CoreBuilder 5000 switch with 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connections to six SuperStack II 1000 switches that connect to 100 PCs via switched 10 Mbps Ethernet.
In addition the 3Com hardware, Princess is using 3Com's Transcend(R) Enterprise Manager management software to control, configure and manage its local and remote networks from a single management console. 3Com is also delivering 24-hour X 7-day support, free software upgrades and advance hardware replacement to Princess through its comprehensive Guardian (sm) service program.
"Thanks to 3Com, we have created a rock-solid, high-performance network infrastructure that will let us grow to double our cruise operations over the next few years," said Czarnecki. "The stability, performance and scalability inherent in 3Com systems means we can operate with maximum efficiency on land and at sea to grow our business and, ultimately, more fully satisfy our customers."
About 3Com Corporation
With more than 200 million customers worldwide, 3Com Corporation connects more people to information in more ways than any other networking company. 3Com delivers innovative information access products and network system solutions to large, medium and small enterprises; carriers and network service providers; PC OEMs; and consumers. 3Com. More connected.(tm) For further information, visit 3Com's World Wide Web site at www.3com.com or the press site at www.3com.com/pressbox.
3Com, SuperStack, Fast EtherLink, CoreBuilder and Transcend are registered trademarks and More connected. and Guardian are trademarks of 3Com Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
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