Zurich Airport in Switzerland handles an annual passenger load that is more than double the population of the country. With the collapse several years ago of Swissair—the nation’s predominant airline and the largest carrier at Zurich Airport—Unique, the privately owned airport company, had to change its role from a mere administrator of airport infrastructure to an active manager of airport operations. To enhance its supervision of daily airport activities, Unique worked with Microsoft partners Zühlke Engineering and NeuroPie Consulting to create ZEUS, a solution based on Microsoft .NET–connected software that captures and displays information from a variety of enterprise systems. The result is fast, graphical presentation of real-time information, which helps airport managers and employees make quick decisions that improve service at the airport.

Though smaller in size than most neighboring countries, Switzerland has long played a historic role in the politics and finances of Europe. The country’s central location, political neutrality, renowned banking system, and spectacular scenery make it a continental hub for business, diplomatic, and tourist activities. Serving this vital country is Zurich Airport, the nation’s largest air facility capable of handling large amounts of international traffic. Although the facility is relatively small compared with other international airports, Zurich Airport plays a pivotal role in European as well as global politics and commerce. The number of travelers who will pass through Zurich Airport in 2005 is projected to be about 17.5 million—more than twice Switzerland’s population of 7.3 million people.

In late 2001, Zurich Airport and the companies that provided services there experienced a crisis. Swissair, the country’s leading airline and owner of most of the service contractors at the airport—including the Operations Control Center—went into bankruptcy and, ultimately, out of business. To ensure the long-term functioning of the airport, Unique, the private airport company owned in part by several Swiss municipalities, had to play a more active role in managing the airport operation. Today, Unique, which has approximately 1,200 employees, works with about 1,300 airport business partners employing some 20,000 people who handle everything from baggage handling to food services.

When Unique assumed its oversight role for the airport, it faced a significant information technology challenge. After the breakup of Swissair, no central authority or system existed for monitoring the airport’s daily activities. Flight delays, declining quality of customer service, and other issues threatened the airport’s reputation.

Senior management at Unique realized that the company needed to implement a new IT system that could quickly and easily provide high-level overviews of critical airport functions. Accomplishing this meant implementing a solution that could integrate data from five enterprise applications that help manage key airport functions, including baggage handling, alarms, environmental monitoring, radar, and the main airport information systems. The enterprise applications were running on UNIX-based computers.

"What we wanted was to collect information from the many systems used at the airport, combine that data, and then offer it in a visual format to provide a complete overview of what was happening at any given moment," says Andrea Baroni, Head of Airport Operation for Unique. "We were interested in implementing a business activity monitoring system that could provide real-time information about what is happening now and what has occurred in the past 24 hours. Such a solution would be much faster-moving than traditional data warehousing or business intelligence applications."

However, Unique did not find any off-the-shelf application that could support its new management role and at the same time comply with industry standards of performance management and business activity monitoring. So the company decided to build its own graphically rich "dashboard" application that would provide at-a-glance overviews of critical airport information such as passenger forecasts, flight data, environmental conditions, baggage loads, management summaries, and reports that could be delivered with attached documents.

Unique, working with Microsoft® Certified Partners Zühlke Engineering and NeuroPie Consulting, decided to create and deploy a solution based on Microsoft .NET software for connecting people, information, systems, and devices. The solution, named ZEUS after the Greek god of the sky and ruler of the other Olympian gods, is a software suite for airport managers and employees.

ZEUS was created with the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 development system, Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1, and Web services. It runs on the Microsoft Windows Server? 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system and SQL Server? 2000—both part of Windows Server System? integrated server software. The various IT components used to create ZEUS provide a service-oriented architecture that includes smart client technology.

Smart clients are small software applications that can reside on a variety of devices and retain their computing power but can easily access and manipulate information that is distributed throughout various enterprise applications. The ZEUS smart client application resides on PCs throughout the airport. It can access information from the ZEUS database and use Web services to communicate with a Web service "integration broker"—a server computer that accesses information from partner and airport management systems throughout the facility. The ZEUS-based information also is accessible to traveling managers over secure Internet connections.

In addition to collecting data from enterprise systems throughout the airport, ZEUS provides an intuitive graphical interface for eight component applications. These applications are used for tasks such as viewing an airport map, monitoring flight data, tracking on-time arrival statistics, and monitoring performance of specific airport operations such as baggage handling. ZEUS also provides tools for collaboration and for reviewing the revenues of specific operations.

The ZEUS solution has delivered a number of benefits to the airport, both leading up to and following deployment in summer 2004. The Microsoft development tools provided a powerful environment for capturing and integrating dispersed data into a unified, easy-to-use interface. The performance of the system, which runs around the clock, has been extremely stable and reliable, and provides users with much faster access to information than before. And, for Unique and its Zurich Airport partners, the system provides what Baroni calls a "level of transparency" for the entire facility, helping the companies that run the airport enhance the strengths and correct the deficiencies of daily operations so that the airport can continue providing world-class services.

Unique considered using the Java development language for creating ZEUS but decided that the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET would ultimately enable a solution that could be delivered faster and integrate disparate UNIX-based data and systems more efficiently.

"We decided not to use Java and to instead use Microsoft technology because of the integration of the tools and with the user desktop," says Martin Rutishauser, Partner in Zühlke Engineering. "The .NET technologies are much easier and much better for developers—and ultimately for end users—than Java technology to implement rich graphical elements. We have experienced this in many other business-critical applications that we have developed over the years."

Jürgen Weder, Partner in NeuroPie Consulting, adds that the ease of adding Web services with the Microsoft tools also was compelling. "We wanted to use Web services for the communications between the systems—and also for creating better and faster collaboration between employees and businesses running the airport operations," Weder says.

"The .NET development environment provides very strong support for Web services, which are key to integrating the systems," he continues. "We also know that there are many companies already using .NET or basing their own software on .NET. When you set out to build a new solution, it’s good to know that you have the possibility of incorporating software that already exists. We felt that .NET would be a very good investment and would be the technology of the future for solutions like ZEUS."

Baroni says his development team cites a number of benefits in working with the .NET Framework compared with Java. For example, it is easier to create user interface functions, and .NET has better integration with desktop programs such as Microsoft Office. The .NET Framework also makes it easier to implement high levels of security, and .NET-based Web services are relatively easy to integrate into UNIX and other systems.

Initial development of ZEUS began in June 2003, and within three months Unique, NeuroPie, and Zühlke had a prototype in place. The team continued working on updates to the solution and was able to deploy a fully functioning version by the following summer.

International airports never close, and the nonstop availability of the ZEUS system is key to its success. "An airport runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so it’s very important for managers to have access at all times to important data so that we are informed on what’s going on daily," says Josef Felder, Chief Executive Officer of Unique.

"I personally use all of our operational databases, including from my home or from places where I am visiting, just to make sure that I’m always aware of what’s going on at our airport," he says. "I love the system because, besides the usual facts and figures, it also shows a lot of diagrams. Within two or three minutes, I have a full picture of what is happening at the airport that day or what happened on the previous day."

Felder says this kind of quick and reliable information access was simply not available before the ZEUS system, when it often took a day or longer to get a single report on a single event.

Adrian Boss, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Unique, adds that the reliability of ZEUS makes the jobs of managers much easier. "Our main concern when creating ZEUS was the integration of all the different kinds of data," he says. "The system has turned out to be one of the most reliable in the airport. That makes it much easier for me to go home and go to sleep at night."

Baroni says one of the most important benefits of the .NET-based ZEUS system is that, by making a wide array of information faster and easier to access and understand, it provides a "level of transparency" in all airport operations and businesses. This helps managers at Unique and airport partner companies more quickly identify and fix problems that degrade customer service.

"When I once asked the manager of a major European airport about the current state of his operation, he answered, ‘Ask me tomorrow. That’s when I get the statistics,’ " Baroni says. "Most airports are, in fact, managed purely reactively and at a very slow pace—like a car that is fitted with excellent rearview mirrors but has a windscreen and side windows made of frosted glass. For typical airport systems, information on many important details has to be collected and combined from different systems. It often takes considerable time before you learn what has happened and how certain events have negatively affected an operation."

In contrast, Baroni says, the ZEUS system offers flexibility to adapt quickly to meet the ever-changing needs of today’s dynamic business. For example, if a new system for measuring security checks is implemented, ZEUS can display data in a graphical format showing how quickly passengers are moving through the system and where any bottlenecks exist. This would help managers act quickly to resolve any problems, resulting in smoother traffic flows through the airport.

Boss, the Unique CIO, says the quick access to information will improve the competitiveness and productivity of all the businesses involved in running Zurich Airport. "Before, it was impossible to integrate all the information into one system the way we can do it today with ZEUS," he says. "It was hard to know what was going on and where improvements could be made to airport operations.

"Now, it is much easier and faster for users to get information and analyze it in the way that they want," he continues. "Managers throughout the airport can be much more involved in decision making on a daily basis. This brings an increased awareness about quality and operations in general. That [awareness] will help us continue to make service improvements that will help the facility keep its status as a world-class airport."

Microsoft .NET is software that connects people, information, systems, and devices through the use of Web services. Web services are a combination of protocols that enable computers to work together by exchanging messages. Web services are based on the standard protocols of XML, SOAP, and WSDL, which allow them to interoperate across platforms and programming languages.

.NET is integrated across Microsoft products and services, providing the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, secure solutions with Web services. These solutions provide agile business integration and the promise of information anytime, anywhere, on any device.

For more information about Microsoft .NET and Web services, please visit these Web sites:
www.microsoft.com/net msdn.microsoft.com/webservices

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
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For more information about Unique, visit the Web site at:
www.unique.ch

For more information about Zühlke Engineering products and services, visit the Web site at: www.zuehlke.com

For more information about NeuroPie products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.neuropie.com