I am the IT Manager for group of regional airlines in Australia and the Pacific. I have hit a situation where I am at loggerheads with other Managers over the direction we should take with regard to a particular software requirement. I thought I might start my first discussion to seek the thoughts of my peers. I will give the background and would appreciate anyones comments.
We have 2 independant projects running that are now starting to converge. We now need to make a decision on whether we continue with 2 apps and integrate or make one app a one-stop-shop.
The first project was to develop a desktop app used for the day to day assignment of aircraft to flights. The software uses a timeline style display to graphically represent flight assignments to aircraft and scheduled maintenance activities for aircraft. We built functionality for drag’n’drop of flights to aircraft, recording crew assignments and browser view of the information.
The trigger for this development was that we had the situation where an aircraft was sent out on a flight, arrived at its destination only to find it could not return because it would exceed safety limits. So in our software we built in checks that would have prevented the aircraft being assigned in the first place since it would exceed safety limits down the track.
The second project was to provide real time tracking of aircraft. Key information such as gear up, gear down and GPS position information is sent via satellite back to our service provider. The service provider then displays these details on a map accessible through the Internet. This project is owned by our Engineering division.
Both applications share flight details and their assignment to aircraft but currently the data entry has to be done once for each application. It makes sense that they are integrated so this happens only once and removes the risk of discrepancies.
Since we had a non disclosure agreement, I supplied all details of our application to the supplier of the satellite tracking with the request to design and quote the integration. This included our DB, original design documents and statement of integration requirements.
After several months the supplier came back saying they had now developed garphical timeline display of flight assignment to aircraft and maintenance blocks like our application and a recommendation that we drop using our own app and use their web app solely.
My initial reaction was that they have taken our idea but a subsequent meeting with the supplier assured me that they developed this to meet the requirements of a prospective customer. Anyway, after many discussion I do accept their explanation and agree there has been no code theft.
But as a result of these events I am now being told by our GM to move forward with the suppliers recommendation and just use their web application.
The suppliers web app is much more cumbersome to use than our own. For example, to change the assignment of a flight to an aircraft they have to delete the flight then recreated whereas in our desktop app we drag the flight represented by a graphical bar on the timeline to another aircraft and drop it. There are severalother examples similar to this.
Additionally, the main users of the application is the operations control center in Papua New Guinea (PNG). PNG has a total of 10Mb of Internet bandwidth for the entire country and it is unreliable. Internet access is also charged at roughly .30c per MB.
So my assesment is that we should not be using a hosted application with the Internet as the communications medium for an application where real time data is important and Internet cost is high. I also do not believe that the web app is as “user friendly” as the desktop app we developed. Finally I have concerns over the service provider controlling our data as well as the applications used to maintain and extract the data. The supplier has only 2 customers using their services for aircraft tracking, has only 1 developer so I have real concerns over what happens should they cease to trade or change direction.
I believe we should be receiving aircraft positional information from the supplier and we store this internally on our DB and provide the user interface. However this will cause a rift between us and our service provider. So what I am suggesting is that we integrate our apps so we store data locally and work off this should there be any Internet issues and reduce cost so that data is sent once only and viewable by all in our operation.
However I am being branded that my objection to the suppliers recommendation is only that I have an emotional attachment to what we have developed. I believe I am setting this aside and being objective but my concerns are falling on deaf ears.
Can any of my peers offer their advice on the direction I should be pushing?