Canadian National Railways
Finds the Right
Messaging Software Track
(Originally published in Messaging Magazine, January/February 1999)

By Nick Del Torto, Canadian National Railways
  

As Canada’s largest railroad system, Canadian National Railway (CN) transports goods such as coal, sulpher, fertilizers, industrial, grain and forest products over 13,000 miles of track totaling $4 billion (Cdn) in annual revenues.

In 1990 we searched for a new e-mail messaging solution to connect thousands of geographically dispersed employees serving customers across Canada and the United States.

We needed a cost-effective and reliable way to put managers and executives in its Montreal headquarters in close contact with each other and with its workforce in the field. At the time, four thousand e-mail users were connected to a mainframe-based program, but that fell short of company-wide coverage and had very limited functionality. Employees wanted better and faster access, lower utilization of the central processing unit (CPU), better utilization of Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) and scalability (we wanted complete coverage of the company).

Employees also wanted features such as word wrap, bulletin boards and conferences, along with increased security and the ability to upload and download files.

After evaluating several software programs CN found a solution that offered the right combination of enhanced user functionality with an efficient back end in a solution. That solution was called TAO from Fischer International System Corporation (FISC).

Users were migrated to the new solution over a period of one year and since its deployment the user population has grown to 19,000 and is used both in French and English. We first installed the solution in a test region for evaluation by IT and power users. We communicated with other FISC users to evaluate support, CPU usage and general user acceptance. We then migrated users by department, there were no migration utilities available so mailboxes were transferred by mailing the items from the original system to the new mailbox. Some users refused to migrate (e-mail is a religion), but once they saw the enhanced features (i.e., word wrap, PC upload and downloads, etc.) they joined the bandwagon.

Built to support a centralized database of many users, the new database is reliable and requires minimal administrative management. At CN, that means handling more than two million messages per month, with service up and running on a 24-hour basis. Seven employees are responsible for maintaining the e-mail solution with a mere four-hour window per week available for downtime. As businesses and people rely on the operation of our trains, the efficient operation of our trains relies on reports posted through the e-mail system. Because the database works across a wide variety of platforms, CN’s centralized e-mail system can be accessed in a variety of locations and installations. It can also be easily managed from a central or a remote location and it is available on a lot of platforms and the data is displayed the way the user expects to see it on his or her platform.

CN also uses the Global Connection Server (GCS) by TAO, which supports protocols and standards including Simple Mail Transfer Protocol/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (SMTP/MIME), X.400 and POP3 as well as fax and paging technology. CN is also able to communicate with the Internet world as well as with its community of Notes Mail users. CN is now able to virtually support all e-mail clients.

The ease of utility is constant for everyone from users to administrators. We find the modules straight forward and easy to customize. We are heavy users of bulletin boards and have created API’s to support them. One application helps our employees to upload and download information from our human resources bulletin board over our intranet and it is used quite a bit.

A multilingual company based in Montreal, the company was anxious to have messaging capability in French as well as English. In 1992, when the multilingual version became available, CN purchased it in French and this capability is heavily used throughout the company.

In taking this solution to the next level, a Global Directory Server (GDS) will be incorporated from ISOCOR into its messaging product. GDS makes for a powerful system that unifies various directories to a metadirectory via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and X.500 protocol and standard. CN has become an early adopter of this technology and may incorporate another new module that handles digital certificates to enable the sending of secure messages. We are starting to do transactions over our intranet and are looking to do customer transactions over the Internet in the future. The new module may be the answer.

CN finds TAO an extremely durable and flexible software suite that stands the test of time, supporting CN for nearly a decade as an early e-mail program and now in a much more varied fashion.