Challenge

While the touch points for a cruise guest were increasing from just web into also app and cabin tv, developed by different vendors, customer data was fragmented and scattered out over various back end systems throughout the customer life cycle. The challenge was to allow different front-end builders (creating the website, mobile app and cabin tv) to provide guests with a unified experience on multiple touch points, even on disconnected ships.

Solution

NetMatch built a collection of .NET Framework Windows services that together form the Meine Reise middleware. The services are all connected to various Service Bus Message broker instances deployed on shore and on each of the ships. Tooling was created to automatically provision topics and subscriptions on the broker in order to provide seamless shore - ship communication even when these ships are occasionally disconnected from the internet. A front-facing service aggregation web API provides a simple web API to front-end systems that hides away the complexity of managing and routing transactions with systems distributed across onboard and shore side data centers.

For each of the existing back end systems, a middleware gateway service was created to connect the back-end to the middleware messaging infrastructure in two directions. The underlying message queues act as buffers that make the overall solution resilient to unavailability of any of the back-end systems (due to maintenance, version upgrades or network issues).