Alithia
Alithia
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An Advanced Information Technology and MUlti Media Environment
An Advanced Information Technology and Multi Media Environment

Cruising the most extraordinary and deserted sites on earth the cruiser racer Alithia disposes of an advanced IT and Multi Media infrastructure allowing to keep in touch anytime and anywhere.

 

An intranet implemented with a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet and an 11 MBit/s wireless local area network provides the onboard information technology platform. Servers and clients are rugged IBM ThinkPad T23 Pentium III 1,13 GHz laptop as clients and servers. They are ideally suited for the marine environment given their robustness, size and weight. They run Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Office XP with Lotus Notes as information repository, replication engine and e-mail tool. Over two bundled 64KB Inmarsat high speed data links Lotus Notes synchronizes data on board with a Notes server in a Berlin data center. This technology minimizes the - still very expensive - satellite online connection costs. The two HSD lines provide internet access, video conferencing and electronic banking capability.

All laptops are equipped with hardware and software to capture, edit, and present multimedia data from digital photography and digital video. The vessels documents, spare parts inventory, procurement and maintenance cycle are managed by the ideayacht software. All parts (SKUs) are labeled with a waterproof bar code and stored in fixed location bins. All parts transaction are recorded with a handheld scanning device to keep inventory information up-to-date.

In terms of peripherals, the boat is equipped with laser and color printers, scanners, dedicated fax machines as well as DVD- and CD-ROM writers for archiving or publishing of digital pictures and movies. In terms of entertainment, the vessel has a central video and audio entertainment center in the lower salon, video and audio in the crew mess and the stern quarter. Beyond those group entertainment points, the boat relies on personal video and audio devices that can connect in each cabin to a ceiling mounted speaker system.

An extranet provides all kinds of media rich information about the vessel and its activities for a closed user group using a Web server in the data center. Data includes an extensive photo database for presentations of electronic albums and for individual selections of print outs. This way, family and friends can stay in touch no matter how remote an adventure may be.

IBM Thinkpad