Ascent Technology Deploys IONA Technologies' Orbix in Airline Decision Support System
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Ascent Technology, a leading provider of resource scheduling and allocation systems for the air transport industry, is using IONA Technologies' Orbix family of products to implement Ascent's complex, mission-critical solutions to logistical challenges facing air transport organizations. Ascent uses Orbix as the middleware infrastructure for its ARIS products which enable aircraft routing and gate information display.

Ascent's customers for these Orbix-based products include Delta Airlines, the Federal Express Corporation and Japan Airlines. With IONA Technologies' Orbix at the core of these products, Ascent can provide its customers with flexible solutions which can be easily tailored to meet specific application needs. Orbix, a leading object middleware product, provides a complete range of technologies for the creation of effective business solutions. Through its conformance with the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standard, Orbix enables organizations to make their different software and hardware systems work together as one solution.

Ascent Technology's ARIS/AR product for aircraft routing consists of two modules: Display Board and Turn Generator. The Display Board provides real-time display of aircraft status information, while the Turn Generator automatically builds the turns that link flight legs together. The Turn Generator uses advanced optimization techniques to achieve the most reasonable turn times for each type of aircraft in the fleet. It also balances aircraft utilization and manages the placement of aircraft at maintenance stations to coincide with routine maintenance schedule. Another of Ascent's products, ARIS/GateView, provides real-time gate status information to administrative personnel throughout an airport. Depending on an individual user's needs, this information can be displayed either as a Gantt chart that relates flights to gates over time, or as an aerial view representation of the airport's ground operations.

According to Windler Schweer, vice president of sales at Ascent Technology, "Our ARIS products must deliver decisions that our airline and airport customers can trust one hundred percent of the time. In turn, we need to build our products on a platform we can trust one hundred percent of the time to support robust, scaleable and secure systems for our customers. This is why we use Orbix; we believe it is superior to all of its competitors."

"Air transportation managers in many of the world's leading airlines and airport authorities are now streamlining their operations by using decision support systems based on optimization techniques." commented Kieron Branagan, director of business development, Airline and Travel Industry Group at IONA Technologies. "Ascent Technology recognized that in order to build advanced decision support systems, it was imperative to select an architecture in which information could be obtained from a diverse range of computing environments and be processed in a consistent and seamless manner. We are pleased to announce that Ascent selected CORBA and the industry's leading implementation, Orbix."

Ascent offers an integrated suite of software solutions that focus on the resource planning, allocation and management needs of the medium- to large-scale airports.

For over 11 years Ascent has been helping airports around the world increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of managing time-critical activities such as gate assignment, ramp equipment allocation and airside personnel scheduling. IONA Technologies' internal Airline and Travel Industry Group was formed to ensure the widespread deployment of distributed object technology. The Group manages the growing need for CORBA in the development of mission-critical systems throughout this dynamic industry.

For more information visit: http://www.iona.com