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The Public Warehousing Group, comprising Public Warehousing Company (PWC), a leading provider of logistics and supply chain solutions & a Microsoft Global Partner award finalist has developed the first world-class enterprise solution for the customs' sector on the Microsoft's .NET platform. The solution has been developed in partnership with Inspection & Control Services Co. (ICS), a Washington DC-based provider of customs mordernisation and related decision support solutions and Microsoft Consulting Services.
The solution, MicroClear, is an integrated modernization, control and advanced decision support system for customs departments that provides a rich and extensible foundation for building sophisticated customs clearance applications that integrate seamlessly with existing back-end systems.
Introducing MicroClear at a press briefing held at the Microsoft Stand at Gitex 2001, Mr. Tarek Sultan, Chairman and Managing Director, PWC said: "PWC prides itself on its use of the best available technology to improve efficiencies, address customer needs and build new services for the future."
"We developed MicroClear in answer to the inherent need for an end-to-end robust and globally applicable trade modernization plan. By using business intelligence in software solutions, MicroClear aims at improving the efficiency of all processes associated with trade and customs, both at the global and regional level."
MicroClear revolutionizes the process of customs clearance for both the trading and customs department community by making all customs processes and transactions accessible via a secure and encrypted Internet channel. Additionally, MicroClear is designed flexibly in order to build tailored, scalable customs clearance solutions that optimise user experience and provide business managers with real-time analysis of their online business.
Capable of handling the demanding requirements of a diverse end-user community, including customs administrators and officials, airport and seaport authorities, importers, exporters and freight forwarders, MicroClear is aimed at speeding up procedures and minimizing administrative costs to the business community and customs departments alike.
"An efficient and effective customs administration system is essential to the welfare of virtually any country in the world economy. By encouraging an efficient trading system, MicroClear will play an important role by providing true competitive advantage in today's demanding business environment. It will also play a vital role in combating fraud and the illegal trafficking of prohibited and restricted goods," added Mr. Sultan.
The solution, built on the revolutionary Microsoft .NET framework, a final version of which will launch internationally this year, takes full advantage of both the Microsoft .NET and the Windows 2000 platforms, including support for Microsoft Active Directory. The solution is built on the .Net enterprise server family, including Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Commerce Server 2000, SQL Server, Biz Talk Server 2000 and running on Windows 2000. MicroClear was developed using key Microsoft .NET development tools such as Visual Studio .NET, ASP.NET, C#, .NET Common Language Runtime and Web Services.
"No other platform offered us the same comparable Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) or technological comprehensiveness as Microsoft did. For example, one of the key features of MicroClear is that it is "future proofed", to be consistent with global e-government initiatives as well as existing and emerging industry-standard protocols like EDI and XML."
"We were able to leverage the core capabilities of Microsoft's Biz Talk Server 2000 to simplify communications and interfaces with all system end-users and intermediaries, bringing a high degree of efficiency to an environment that has been historically characterized by high paper volumes," he added.
Another key attribute of MicroClear was that it had to support for e-payment, security and communication protocols, such as Extensible Mark-up Language (XML). MicroClear makes use of inherent Microsoft security protocols as well as separate firewall controlled "demilitarized zones" for internal customs department users and external users. Furthermore leading edge Microsoft encryption technologies and validation and certification protocols, enable MicroClear users to be assured of the integrity and confidentiality of the underlying data.
Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) played a pivotal role in the building of the new application by first conducting a thorough audit of the business requirements of MicroClear.
MCS consultants then produced a comprehensive functional specification that contained Infrastructure guidelines, overall application architecture, web pages workflow and design, data modelling, and the integration architecture with other external systems.
Mr. Bahram Mohazzebi, General Manager, Microsoft (GEM) said: "PWC has been both a valued partner and customer of Microsoft for a long time now and are proven early adopters of the latest innovation in technology. With the development of MicroClear, we are building on this association to map technology with our customers' business objectives. We are confident that this new application will go a long way in bringing new efficiencies to the entire value chain of the customs sector."
Mohazzebi continued to say that over the past year, over 4,000 members of the developer community in the region had been trained to build applications on the Microsoft .NET platform.
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