Chapter 12. USMTMC Overhauls Small Package Shipping with SunPS

As part of a continuing quest to align its operations with twenty-first century business practices, the Freight Systems Division (FSD) of the U.S. Army's Military Traffic Management Command (MTMC) is adopting the latest advances in Internet technology to improve user productivity and responsiveness, reduce operational costs, and streamline application development and maintenance. Working with the Java Center of Sun Professional Services, the FSD used Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), technology to develop a new application to manage the shipment of small packages using multiple domestic and international carriers. Development of the first phase of the application was completed in just 3 months, thanks to a highly granular component-based architecture and a well-structured development process. The FSD expects a full return on its investment within the next 18 months. Taking advantage of the standard system-level services built into the J2EE platform and implemented by J2EE-compliant application servers also helped reduce development time and will make maintenance much easier.

The use of thin-clients to access the application is saving the agency an estimated 60 percent annually on the cost of software upgrades and distribution. Since the application accommodates interfaces to multiple carriers, the FSD doesn't need to install dedicated terminals for each carrier—saving the FSD up to 70 percent in costs.

The FSD is also migrating its older Java applications to the J2EE platform to enhance their scalability, reliability, and ease of maintenance. In all of these efforts, the FSD expects to benefit from significant reductions in development cycle time—in some cases, by as much as 50 percent.

As the first agency in the Department of Defense (DoD) to implement the J2EE standard, the FSD will serve as a model for other agencies and help reduce the risk these agencies might perceive with regard to adopting the new technology.