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Synchronization | API Management | Fleetwide Analytics | Content Management | IOT Device Management
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CONTENTSSynchronization
API Management
Fleetwide Analytics
Content Management
IOT Device Management
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Sourcetoad is a technology consulting and software development firm. Our domain expertise in cruise software has helped our clients launch complex projects around shore excursions, hotel booking, onboard management, interactive television interfaces, digital signage, interactive kiosks, and customer-facing web and mobile applications.
Cruise Director is a platform that allows cruise lines to simplify the management and development of fleetwide onboard systems.
Cruise Director’s features include:
Ű Content synchronization from shoreside systems to shipboard applications.
Ű API management that creates a universal onboard API, allowing for the rapid development of apps, embedded systems, and other onboard tools.
Ű Content management systems for digital signage, entertainment metadata, and other subsystems, including custom modules that are easy to build.
Ű A fleetwide analytics platform for monitoring every aspect of onboard passenger engagement, from media consumption to onboard purchases.
INTRODUCTION
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SYNCHRONIZATIONManaging the thousands of digital assets required for an interactive world has become an overwhelming task. This becomes exponentially more difficult for cruise lines with different types of onboard system, multiple classes of ships, or different brands in their line. The standard solution in this Internet-based universe is to leverage a content management system (CMS) hooked up to a content delivery network (CDN). However, for cruise lines, streaming assets from the Internet is cost-prohibitive or even impossible, making local storage a necessity.
Cruise Director’s CDN module is the solution to fleetwide, digital asset management. The shoreside instance of Cruise Director seamlessly integrates with your existing CMS and ingests all relevant assets and text into a single database. If required, the CDN can also pull data from multiple CMS systems. From this single repository, Cruise Director synchronizes all assets down to the local CDNs on each ship in the fleet. All images, videos, PDFs, and text assets are then available locally to any shipboard system. What’s more is that Cruise Director will only synchronize new or modified CMS assets to the ships, saving bandwidth and time.
With Cruise Director, a marketing department in Miami can change the web hero image for a shore excursion. If a piece of digital signage on a ship 3,000 miles away uses that same image, it will automatically be updated.
Sync your CDN, media, signage screens, CMS, and custom modules.
Ű Selective sync: Synchronize content to one particular ship, a certain class of ships, or an entire fleet.
Ű Bandwidth management: Monitor your bandwidth usage to perform syncs during off-peak times.
Ű Synchronization logs: Instantly know which ships are running which versions of your content.
Ű Roll backs: Locally revert content to previous states with the click of a button.
Brand A – RiversBrand A – Oceans Brand B – Oceans
Cruise Compass Content Management System
Movie MetadataDigital Signage
Brand VideosMusic Marketing Data
CRUISE DIRECTOR CLOUD
What I like most about Cruise Director is that none of our fleet’s existing systems had to change.
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Allow your systems to act as one, regardless of age or technology choices.
Ű Use different PMS systems across a fleet.
Ű Future-proof strategic technology decisions.
Ű Build a custom business logic layer across all systems.
Ű Have a universal onboard API.
RFID wristbands, smart TV systems, onboard augmented reality mobile apps, and Bluetooth low-energy door locks are all part of the modern cruise ship tech experience. Each initiative is painstakingly planned, diligently executed, thoroughly tested, and finally, carefully integrated and released. Every few years, however, a new system will take the place of an old one, or something even shinier will appear on the market, and the cycle will begin anew.
Cruise Director is a new way of looking at the onboard technological ecosystem. Rather than integrating technology systems with a ship’s component parts, developers interact with a universal set of abstractions and controls. API calls are exactly the same on a new build using an Oracle PMS as they are on a 30-year-old ship running a homegrown system.
This abstraction process also future-proofs ships and allows for technology decisions to be made strategically. If a cruise line decides to change PMS provider or install a new iTV system, it could mean years of retrofits or dealing with the operational pains of supporting multiple systems. As a result, fleetwide integrations have made vendor lock-in commonplace in the cruise industry. Innovation becomes slow, risky, and expensive. Cruise Director removes these hurdles completely. Now, each ship in a fleet can have a different PMS, iTV system, VSAT provider, weather system, or digital signage vendor, allowing the guest-facing technology systems to be completely unified.
API MANAGEMENT
TV Satellite Provider
THE OLD WAY: API SPAGHETTI
Content Management System
Video On Demand
WeatherWiFi Portal
Property Management System
Media Metadata
GPS Navigation Systems
Digital SignageSurface Tables App Kiosks WebiTV
TV Satellite Provider
Content Management System
Video On Demand
WeatherWiFi Portal
Property Management System
Media Metadata
GPS Navigation Systems
Digital SignageSurface Tables App Kiosks WebiTV
THE SOLUTION: CRUISE DIRECTOR
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Provide fleetwide data on everything from movie viewership to app-based tour bookings, regardless of the underlying technology.
Ű Build custom reports with multiple dimensions.
Ű Export analytics to be used in any BI system.
Ű Save commonly used reports.
FLEETWIDE ANALYTICSProviding analytical data on how your fleet is functioning is vital in today’s market. Having exact viewership numbers for TV channels allows for better negotiating leverage at contract time. Knowing that passengers are not using the interactive TV system to book dining reservations points to a design or technical problem. Traditionally this data is often spread through a myriad of systems, each with their own product owners and experts. Even worse, if you have differing technologies across your fleet, comparing data becomes almost impossible.
Because Cruise Director acts as a mediator between all passenger-facing tech systems, it becomes the perfect tool for data collection and decision science. A quick look at the Cruise Director Analytics module can tell you the top ten movies being watched across the fleet, the total revenue numbers of spa bookings through your onboard app for the month of June, or the average spend per passenger for onboard Internet access — all in near real time, and regardless of the TV system, reservation technology, or property management system.
All data can be easily exported into a variety of formats or fed automatically into the business intelligence suite of your choice.
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Digital Signage
TV
App
Content Manager
IT Officer
Broadcast Manager
New Movie
WiFi Instructions
Compendium
Signage Playlist
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CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Cruise Director comes standard with modules for managing various onboard content systems. All modules are built on top of the synchronization and analytics systems. This means that a custom module, developed to provide iTV systems with future cruise sales content, can be remotely managed. This usage data will be added automatically to the fleetwide analytics for tracking.
Some of our most popular modules include:
Ű The Entertainment module, which manages all metadata, cover art, and streaming URLs for multiple media types, such as live TV, movies-on-demand, customized video categories, music-on-demand, and streaming music.
Ű The Signage module, which is a full-featured, digital signage system capable of managing an entire ship’s signage requirements, enabling ship and shoreside staff to create and manage multimedia signage systems and interactive kiosks.
Ű The Cruise Compass module, which allows onboard or shoreside staff to populate screens and devices with digital cruise-compass information daily.
Cruise Director also allows for any number of custom extension modules. For example, you could build an onboard library system, where passengers could browse books on their iPads and then have the paper copies delivered to their cabins. The books’ descriptions and cover art could all be managed from a shoreside office, and all rentals or purchases would be handled through the onboard folio and tracked in the fleetwide analytics system. The possibilities are endless.
Control every aspect of guest-facing content on a ship, from shoreside or onboard.
Ű Send notifications to guests.
Ű Manage onboard events and shows.
Ű Change digital signage screens on the fly.
Ű Synchronize media metadata across a fleet.
Ű Build custom modules for any piece of content.
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IOT DEVICE MANAGEMENT
With thousands of networked devices on a modern ship, it can be hard to see the overall health of individual devices. Adding to the complexity is the number of different types of devices: Android signage systems, Mac Mini interactive kiosks, custom-built cabin TV players, etc. A busy IT officer may need to touch four different systems to manage software updates, reboot frozen machines, or check the uptime of a device.
Cruise Director’s IOT management platform was designed specifically to tackle the complexities of a digital ecosystem. The device manager can detect any new device added to the network, instantly monitoring uptime and health. Alerts can be sent to the appropriate support desks or onboard staff if any system on the ship stops responding.
Building new software or devices on top of Cruise Director’s IOT system is extremely quick and easy. This allows for rapid development and deployment of innovative devices. Your software department could build a new interactive system on a Raspberry Pi and deploy it in an afternoon, without worrying about building management tools, crash analytics, or even usage statistics.
Track and manage any enabled device on a shipboard network.
Ű View device statistics and descriptions.
Ű Monitor uptime and reboot compatible devices.
Ű Control software updates and rollouts.
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