Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 17:44:16 GMT Server: WebSitePro/2.0.36d Accept-ranges: bytes Content-type: text/html Last-modified: Tue, 01 Jul 1997 08:00:04 GMT Content-length: 7320 UPT Additional Background

Union Pacific Technologies

Union Pacific Environments

Union Pacific Technologies (UPT) is the information and communications systems division of Union Pacific Corporation. Established on May 28, 1987, UPT was created in recognition of the increasing demand for development and implementation of new information systems and services to support the Corporation's operating companies. In its role as Chief Information Supplier for Union Pacific Corporation, UPT develops state-of-the-art systems for Union Pacific Railroad, Overnite Transportation Company, Skyway Freight Systems, and Commercial Clients.


Union Pacific Data Centers

UP has understood the value of centralized processing and control since the late 1960's, a time when we had more raw, processing power than NASA at the height of their Apollo space program. Union Pacific's Data Center personnel have vast experience in providing data center services to geographically dispersed customers in the commercial sector and the rapidly expanding corporate family. The Data Center management and support staff have provided quality service over the past ten years to a large and diverse population of users. The Union Pacific team that manages the Data Center facility has a successful record of integrating large and complex installations into the Data Center environment.

Union Pacific Railroad has two large data centers, one located in St. Louis, Missouri, and one located in Omaha, Nebraska.

The St. Louis data center includes:

The Omaha data center includes:

The primary operating site for all EDI applications is the St.Louis data center. The Omaha, Nebraska data center serves as the disaster recovery site for all EDI applications, including the Tandem communications hardware and the IBM 3090s. The Union Pacific Corporation communications network links three major data centers (the third is the Overnite Trucking Data Center in Richmond, VA) that support over 15,000 remote terminal devices or workstations and over 5,000 remote printers on a 24 hour per day, 7 day a week basis.


A Commitment to New Technology

The Union Pacific family also has a strong belief in the benefits of developing and/or migrating our applications to client/server technology. In the last 4 years we've created hundreds of new applications and deployed them on our national wide-area-network which consists of the hardware listed above plus:

To help our employees keep pace with this technology, our standard issue workstation is currently a 166 Mhz Intel Pentium CPU with 32 megabytes of RAM, 2 gigabyte hard-drive, 8x CD-ROM and a 17 inch monitor.


Data Center Support Services

The Telecommunications Operations Center (TOC) is a centralized, state-of-the-art telecommunications center. Highly trained network specialists monitor all voice and data transmissions across the; Union Pacific network, 24 hours a day. Advanced systems, such as Graphic Network Monitoring, feed data signals into the center that create the images which appear on large, wall-sized color screens. These give the TOC a "big picture" of the Union Pacific system, and allow the TOC specialists to swiftly react to service interruptions or, frequently, to anticipate and prevent outages.

In addition, the TOC serves as a troubleshooting center, handling 300-500 trouble calls daily from Union Pacific employees and customers all across the network. The TOC specialists either diagnose and resolve the problems themselves or dispatch technical personnel in the field. Then, the TOC specialists follow-up, touching base with the technical personnel and customers making sure the service is working satisfactorily.

Union Pacific's Online Systems Services (OSS) provides "help desk" support to Union Pacific and commercial clients, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This group, comprised of 35 service representatives, handle over 31,000 inbound calls per month. Expert systems technology combined with video imaging provides the OSS representative with the tools needed to handle problems, efficiently and quickly. The average time a caller is in queue for an OSS representative is 25 seconds. OSS uses an electronic logging system to track software problems that was developed by personnel at UPT. The system allows for electronic transfer of problem information and online searches for current status information. The Software Problem Log system also has an electronic documentation feature.


UPT has better answers to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

For further information contact UPT Marketing at 314-768-6800 or 1-800-877-0328

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