Virginia International Terminals
Virginia International Terminals, Inc. is one of the most sophisticated marine terminal operating companies in the world. It manages all of the state-owned port terminal facilities for the state of Virginia. Over 400 permanent VIT management staff and a variable work force of several thousand International Longshoremen’s Assoc. (ILA) laborers work around the clock to operate this state-of-the-art facility that generates $150 million annually.
Challenge
As a 24-hour operation, VIT depends on a variety of mission-critical applications to manage its operations. These applications, designed to track shipments, manage equipment, enable electronic data interchange and coordinate labor and other resources, were custom-developed in both Speedware/4GL and in COBOL. Furthermore, key information is stored within TurboIMAGE databases, a database management system proprietary to the HP e3000 platform. Virginia International Terminals was eager to undertake a migration process toward a more open computing environment. By doing this, VIT felt that it could protect the value of the investments it made in developing these custom applications and safeguard them against the future.
Solution
Fresche created a “jump start” migration program for VIT. First, Fresche’s professional migration services team performed a detailed assessment of the resources required to migrate VIT’s applications and databases. A consultant from the group then went onsite to VIT’s offices and migrated one of their key applications while at the same time training VIT’s technical staff on the process. Fresche also left behind a host of innovative application and database migration software tools.
Results
Because of the Jump Start program, VIT is now empowered to migrate their remaining applications and databases themselves — saving considerable money and allowing them to maintain complete control over the entire process.
