TNT signs Certus for Malay link

By ADAM GIFFORD

Auckland IT services firm Certus has won the job of getting logistics provider TNT to talk to customer Michelin - in Thailand.

Messages sent between TNT Malaysia's Manhattan warehouse management system and Michelin's JD Edwards manufacturing and order processing software will go through IBM's Newton data centre.

Certus managing director Greg Woolley said his company had built a generic translation layer using IBM WebSphere technology, which could be used for other TNT customers, regardless of their back end systems.

It was already working on a project to link TNT with Dutch grocery wholesaler Mikro's Malaysian operation.

The contracts are the first fruits of a $1 million investment Certus has made in an on-demand business integration platform which uses WebSphere and IBM's new on-demand pricing models.

This allows customers to be charged when they use computing capacity.

"It is trying to align customer return from technology with the costs of using that technology, rather than requiring huge capital expenditure up front," Woolley said.

Certus is paid a monthly fee, and Woolley said there is "ample head room" for growth with the system capable of handing 760 million transactions a year.

TNT's Malaysia-based national operations director, Peter Hubbard, said TNT wanted to match costs to individual customer contracts rather than have capital tied up in plant or software which may not used.

"The on-demand model is perfect for us, because, if at the end of three years our contract is not rolled over, we can just turn off the system."

He said TNT sought a hosting partner after experiencing problems in Malaysia doing point-to-point integration between its client/server warehouse management system and Michelin Malaysia's enterprise planning system.

"Michelin already used WebSphere as its business-to-business communication platform, so TNT wanted an organisation which understood the technology its customer was using. TNT is also a big user of IBM globally."

An attempt to work with a Singapore services firm failed, so TNT looked further afield.

"For moving forward with Manhattan and Certus, this is the way we hope to do business in the future," Hubbard said.

TNT's other logistics customers in Southeast Asia include Colgate-Palmolive, Danone and Tesco.