"Because Railinc information systems and operations are so important to our customers, we wanted the best possible candidate to fill this key spot," says Allen West, President. "After careful consideration, we were fortunate to find the best choice was already in our organization."
Bolon has nearly 20 years' IT experience, more than half with leading transportation sector companies including GE Rail Services, Trans World Airlines and Sea-Land Service, Inc., a subsidiary of CSX Corporation, Inc.
In addition to developing and implementing a number of core railroad industry operations initiatives, Bolon will focus on improving the reliability and availability of Railinc applications and computing infrastructure. "About 18 months ago, we launched a major initiative to improve our system integrity," Bolon says, "and we are seeing significant results from these long-term programs." Incidents, outages and application interruptions have all declined, resulting in better service to customers. "It is my goal to make sure that Railinc continues to improve its already excellent performance."
Other initiatives under Bolon's direction are:
Applying geographic information system and mapping tools to Railinc applications. The first application to take advantage of these capabilities will be rolled out this year, and others are expected to follow next year;
Assisting railroads in researching next-generation technologies to ensure that the industry continues to take advantage of new developments as they become viable;
The adoption of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to speed the development of applications while lowering costs.
Bolon holds a bachelor's degree in Commerce with concentrations in Management Information Systems and Finance from the University of Virginia, as well as a masters degree in Business Administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
