Oracle Working On Next Generation of Freight Transportation in Europe
As a key technology partner in the European Union’s EURIDICE project, Oracle has begun research into Intelligent Cargo in order to develop an ICT infrastructure capable of enabling the next generation of freight transportation in Europe.
Within the next five years, most of the goods flowing through European freight corridors are likely to be self-aware, context-aware and connected through a global telecommunication network to support a wide range of information services for logistics operators, industrial users, and public authorities. This will allow real-time, 'on the fly' services including tracking not just of goods' locations, but also of whatever environmental conditions, changes and interactions might be relevant to their in-transit security and safe delivery.
This new generation of ‘intelligent cargo’ will create a safer and more efficient logistics environment, but it will need to be supported by an entirely new kind of information services platform. The supporting platform will have to make sense of the sheer volume and variety of the data that the transported goods will be generating, and allow secure access to this data and to the related services by a wide variety of industrial and public sector users – from shippers and receivers to logistics providers and customs officials.
Achieving this will require a paradigm shift in the IT platforms and architectures that support information services for Logistics. It will not only require significant processing power, scalability, and flexibility, but it will also need to cope with increased intelligence at the edge of the network and with a distributed, collaborative environment where on-the-fly services will have to be offered to the operators in contact with the goods based on the goods’ conditions and environment.
A part of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technical Development (FP7), EURIDICE is the project charged with researching and developing the concepts, technological solutions, and business models necessary to make this intelligent cargo infrastructure a reality. In building a cargo-item-centered information services platform, the project further aims to provide Europe with improved logistics performance and the most secure and environmentally-friendly freight transport chains.
As one of the partners in the EURIDICE project, Oracle will lead the work on Service Authoring & Orchestration, on the strength of its expertise and proven product offerings in areas including Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Pervasive Computing. It will also take a key role in a number of other aspects of the project, including Framework Architecture, Domain Knowledge Formalisation, and Cargo Intelligence.
EURIDICE has been described by the European Commission Directorate General Information Society as the "lighthouse" of its activities in the area of ICT for improved goods mobility, so the fact that Oracle has been chosen as a technology partner in the research project represents a major endorsement for the company and its technological expertise.
“Considering the importance of the project, Oracle’s participation in EURIDICE is an achievement in itself. EURIDICE will be an excellent opportunity to develop and test innovative solutions in the logistics sector based on our expertise and product offering in areas like Service Oriented Architecture and Pervasive Computing,” said Fulvio Sansone, Business Development Director at Oracle.
The project will not be straightforward, however. As much of the freight transportation information system's intelligence will reside in the individual cargo items, the infrastructure will represent a significant departure from more traditional IT systems, where intelligence is centralized. Creating a new kind of decentralized architecture is a challenge that EMEA Oracle in R&D Programme Technical Director Graeme Kerr is eager to address:
"EURIDICE provides an exciting opportunity to explore and understand the emerging world of distributed, autonomous, event-driven information systems,” he said. “Although challenging, I look forward to demonstrating the key role that Oracle Technology can play in such systems."
Furthermore, a distributed, disconnected and largely autonomous approach more closely mirrors the logistical and organizational complexity of supply chains in the 'real world'. If successful, the work promises to open up new ways to solve other, similar problems.
But ultimately it is opening up Europe to further economic opportunity, innovation and prosperity that is at the heart of the EURIDICE project:
“Thanks to the commitment and proven competence of leading ITC companies like Oracle,” said the project's co-ordinator Paolo Paganelli, “EURIDICE's cargo-centric infrastructure will give even the smallest logistics players the possibility to create, discover, and use intelligent services tied to the single cargo items or the complete supply chain.”
If EURIDICE is a success, Europe could become a more efficient, straightforward and competitive place to do business.
Related Links
EURIDICE kick-off video
EURIDICE project web site
