CAIS, Partners to Offer
Internet Kiosks in Jamaica
The U.S. Navy is setting its sights on a new technology designed to save time and money.
The San Diego-based Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command and the Navy’s Program Executive Office, Expeditionary Warfare, have teamed with industry to develop a computer system architecture to address space, weight, power, cost, interoperability and upgrade issues for the Navy.
The Network Centric Q-70 architecture, which was recently installed in the Navy’s Sea Based Battle Lab aboard the USS Coronado in San Diego, is a low-cost computer network expected to be the next generation of networks for the Navy and for industry.
The Network Centric architecture will allow everything that previously ran on a user’s desktop , including applications, E-mail and local hard drives , to run in a “session” on centralized servers.
This could save more than 50 percent in maintenance, licensing and local area network costs.
The technology also includes encrypted smart cards which operators can slide into any workstation on a ship and have their desktop instantly pop up. An operator can then move to another part of the ship, slide the smart card, and the same desktop will pop up exactly as it was left.
“Operationally, this provides a much more reliable network because if a workstation loses power, burns out or malfunctions, the operator can pull the card out and move to another available station to continue working,” said Mike Kono, Spawar’s lead for the team that developed the Network Centric architecture. “From a maintenance standpoint the (system) is an appliance like a telephone handset. All you have to do is unplug five cables, plug in a replacement device, turn the power on, and be exactly where you were before the failure.”
Main contractors for the Navy’s Network Centric architecture include Lockheed-Martin Corp. and Sun Microsystems.
“It’s a mutual benefit to the industry and to the Navy,” said Michele McGuire, project manager for Spawar’s Network Centric architecture. “(Industry) is gaining a lot of good early technology feedback and we’re gaining state-of-the-art equipment.”
McGuire said such technology will help keep the Navy on the cutting edge.
“Information technology is the cornerstone of how people are communicating,” she said. “We need to ensure we are looking into the future and get that (technology) out to the fleet as soon as we can. You have to be able to incorporate future technology as soon as possible so you’re not behind the curve.”
McGuire said the Navy and its industry partners will continue to refine the Network Centric architecture over the next few months.
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Just In CAIS: San Diego’s CAIS Software Solutions will help provide the first-ever public Internet access in Jamaica.
CAIS has partnered with Fujitsu-ICL Caribbean and Cable & Wireless Services, the leading Jamaican telecom company, to offer Internet kiosks to Jamaican citizens.
About 2 percent of Jamaica’s population (50,000 people) used the Internet in 1998, according to International Telecommunications Union.
“Our goal is to provide convenient, affordable total access solutions to service providers looking to expand the availability of Internet access,” Steve Nye, CAIS Software’s president, said. “Public access initiatives such as this one are an ideal approach for enabling access in countries where in-home access is not feasible for most people.”
Fujitsu and Cable & Wireless are working with the Jamaican government to place the Internet Kiosks in post offices around the island. The entire network will be monitored at CAIS Software’s network operating center.
Initially, 10 public kiosks will be installed in Jamaica. The long-term plan is to provide 200 Internet kiosks.
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