According to the latest policy issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), all known consignors subjected to approval by the local Civil Aviation Department must implement 100% cargo security screening by June 30, 2021.  Hong Kong Secure Transportation System Company Limited (HKSTS) is transforming the industry with Smartsec System, which can check the seal of consignment via IOT device instead of relying on visual inspection.  More importantly, it automates the handling and reporting logistics that increases the competitiveness of Hong Kong air freight industry to international standards.

Hong Kong Secure Transportation Systems Company Limited (HKSTS) was established in 2019 to provide security transportation measures approved by the Civil Aviation Department for the Hong Kong air freight industry.  Built on the Microsoft Azure platform, the Smartsec System can ensure screened cargo are transported from the security warehouse to the Cargo Terminal Operator (CTO) without any unlawful interference or suspicious contact. The Azure cloud platform possesses rich program resources that enable seamless integration of Smartsec with other existing HKSTS platforms, such as a secure transportation system and global agency network.  In addition, it provides intelligent full-process visualization services for customers to accurately track their order status.

Business Challenges

Although the cargo security screening measure is due for implementation by June 30, 2021, the demand for its services is subject to many unknown factors, such as the economic environment, ever-changing customer needs and marketing competition.  If HKSTS builds the Smartsec System in a traditional data centre with a one-off infrastructure purchase, it will incur huge investments.  After the development and implementation, HKSTS will face issues of terminating technical support, hardware, and software End-of-Life (EOL) down the road.

The Solutions

With the maturity of cloud technology and availability of a subscription model on Azure, HKSTS decided to develop the SmartSec application on the platform.  It greatly resolved problems encountered in business operation and fundamentally improved the service efficiency offered by HKSTS.  In addition, two VMs running the Smartsec application operate in tandem with hot standby would greatly increase the SLA of the platform.  Mr Chung Au, IT specialist, said: “We are particularly impressed by the engineering support from SUPERHUB.  They were always one-step ahead when directly communicating with our developer in China.  It minimized our communication burden of technical set-up on Azure, like load balancer configuration, allocation of internal IP and firewall, etc.”

The Benefits

Developing the application on Azure platform has brought the following benefits to HKSTS:

• It saved CAPEX investment and the hassle to project demand and capacity on infrastructure, particularly important during their development stage with unknown demand.  There is the option for different subscription modes, like Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) or Reserve Instance (RI) to suit their needs.

• It improved the flexibility and security of the infrastructure.  Maintenance management and security protection are no longer factors that need to be taken into consideration.  With the global compliance standard due to launch in 6 months, the air freight industry will still face a lot of unknown factors such as COVID-19 and market competition.