Case Study of Deployment of Breeze thin clients in Automatic Ticket Vending Machine of India Railways

Customer Details:
CRIS & Indian Railways
All Over India

Brief on Unreserved Ticketing System thru ATVM’s
Apart from manned counters for dispensing tickets, there are also automatic ticket
vending machines (ATVM) that are operated using smart cards and touch screens.
This technology was first introduced in Mumbai in Oct’2007 and its success led to
proliferation to other metropolitan cities. Chennai, Secunderabad, Delhi and Kolkata
are the other cities where these machines are currently commissioned.

Opportunity:
CRIS wanted to deploy ATVM’s with thin client as CPU, which can sustain different
climate condition across India.

Challenges:

• • Highly secured & lower maintenance client required to enable lesser downtime in terms of
    hardware & software
  • 24 x 7 working
  • Should be able to sustain different climatic condition like very high & low temperatures,
    humid conditions and on top of that no air conditioning environment at stations
  • Must be easily Manageable from remote to reduce the IT support calls and to reduce the
    Client down time
  • Easy to Implement, Configuring & troubleshoot
  • Ability to push patches etc. remotely
  • Data security (Highly confidential information which should not be allowed to taken away
    from any of the UTS counters)
  • Low footprint to ensure minimum physical space required, since it has to be installed within
    an ATVM has limited space

Server, Data Base, Application & other details:

• • • HP Server (Itanium)
    • Server OS – HP AUX
    • Client Application in JAVA

Requirements:

• • • CRIS ATVM application runs on JAVA with X interface
    • Two Flash, one in primary & secondary each for redundancy
    • Customised Linux with support of legacy applications
    • OS size not exceeding 800 MB
    • Minimum three Serial Ports for device connectivity
    • Thermal Printer used for ticket printing with status upadte
    • USB ports to be disabled for storage device access for data security

Solution:
Deployed Breeze ECC Thin Client
Configuration:
Operating System – Embedded Customised Linux with kernel 2.6.32 (as required by CRIS) within 800 MB
Software – X interface, Java and other required dependencies
Hardware- 1.8Ghz Dual Core processor, 2 GB RAM, 8GB FLASH,6 USB ports, one Parallel printer Port,
Three Serial Port etc.
By deploying Breeze thin client following objectives were achieved in addition overcoming
all the challenges mentioned above –

• • • As the thin clients are without any moving part, the maintenance is very low
      compared to regular desktop
    • The OS & software’s are stored in Flash drive which ensured faster speed
    • With USB storage disabled, no unauthorised access to data
    • No fiddling with configuration etc.
    • Protection from viruses and malware attacks
    • Consumes ¼ power compared to a regular desktop, ensuring Huge savings on power
      bills