The connected cruiser
Refresh projects like these are essential in an industry where customer expectations are changing as rapidly as technology itself. “Technology is now part and parcel of the cruising product,” says Martin. “We’ve subscribed to Gallup’s survey of the cruise industry for about two decades now, and for the first time this year, they’ve included a section on onboard technology. It matters more and more.”
Royal Caribbean believes its position as an early technology adopter is a differentiator for the cruise line in a crowded market, especially at a time when the population as a whole is increasingly demanding continuous connectivity.
The cruise line’s investment in satellite connections aboard every ship, including O3b Networks’ O3bMaritime on its larger ships, means customers have access to the same bandwidth they’re used to at home and work — a Royal Caribbean exclusive. That has also allowed the cruise line to attract a different type of customer than before.
“Event planners can truly consider a Royal Caribbean cruise vacation for their incentive travel because people can keep working while they’re gone,” says Martin. “If you’re going to do a corporate event, you can do it on board one of our ships, because for the first time, you can maintain the same level of connectivity throughout your cruise.”
Royal Caribbean recently hosted a group of 1,500 corporate event planners on board Quantum of the Seas, and “they could not believe the connectivity that they had while they were on board,” according to Martin.
Since Royal Caribbean partnered with Insight on new ship builds in 2009, the team has successfully configured and launched seven cruise ships total — including the four largest cruise ships in the world today.
During the course of these seven ship builds, Insight has procured, configured and deployed more than 22,300 devices for use on board, including:
- 12,198 cabin switches
- 195 remote distribution points, or “data closets”
- 35 HP® Blade Center Chassis populated with more than 455 blade servers
- 14 Cisco UCS® Chassis with more than 70 Cisco UCS blade servers
- More than 1,225 virtual machines
- 39 Apple® Xserve® servers
- IBM® Storwize® v7000, NetApp® FAS2040 & DS4243 and HP P2000 & D2700 storage
- 1,334 desktop PCs
- 663 laptop PCs and Toughbook® notebooks
- 3,507 Apple Mac® minis
- 906 micro PCs
- 900 point-of-sale displays
- 80 kiosks
- 3,030 Apple TV® media extenders
- 78 rugged handheld tablets
- 130 iPad® devices
Insight’s support has delivered significant process and business benefits for Royal Caribbean over the last six years as well, including:
- A 95% improvement in cabin switch configuration time (up to 2,700 cabins per ship) due to improved processes
- An up to 63% reduction in travel time and expenses between the ship and integration center as each build required less oversight
“I mentioned before that not everybody at Royal Caribbean believed that partnering with a third-party firm was a good idea at the outset,” Martin recalls. “We knew we were really onto something when we got to that second and third ship and our people were coming back from Chicago saying, ‘This is a way better way to do it.’ We’ve seen Insight‘s integration expertise deliver consistent benefits for us.”
“At Insight, especially in the integration center, documentation and process are as important as the air we breathe,” Lyons says. The entire facility is built to reproduce the exact same solution the exact same way, time after time. “So while Royal Caribbean didn’t need to meet ISO [International Organization for Standardization] standards like many of our customers, we knew that applying the same process excellence would be highly valuable in a project this massive.”
Martin agrees, adding, “It created a lot of really good rigor around what we do. It’s kind of a negative word but a very positive thing, and that is frankly something that Insight brought to the table. They had to do it in order to be able to have a repeatable process.”
