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Table of Content
1. Company Background ............................................................................................ P.1
2. IT Infrastructure ...................................................................................................... P.1
2.1. IT Infrastructure Components ....................................................................... P.1
2.2. Key / New Functions or Features ............................................................. P.1 - 2
2.3. Benefits and Challenges of Managing IT Infrastructure ............................... P.2
3. Privacy and Social Issues ................................................................................... P.2 - 3
4. M-Commerce .......................................................................................................... P.3
4.1. M-Commerce Infrastructure .......................................................................... P.3
4.2. Key / New Functions and Features of M-Commerce .................................... P.3
4.3. Benefits and Challenges of M-Commerce ............................................... P.3 - 4
5. Social Media Marketing / E-Commerce ................................................................. P.4
6. E-Learning / E-Training .......................................................................................... P.5
7. Information Security and Fraud Protection ............................................................. P.5
8. Managing IT System ............................................................................................... P.6
9. Summary ................................................................................................................. P.6
10. References ............................................................................................................. P.7
Company Background:
The Kowloon Motor Bus Company Limited (KMB) was founded on 13 April 1933
which it is a bus company operating franchised services in Hong Kong. The KMB
aims to uphold high standards of corporate governance and corporate social
responsibility and is ISO 9001:2000 certified. Also, KMB is the first franchised public
bus company in Hong Kong to achieve Occupational Health and Safety Assessment
Series (OHSAS) 18001 certification for their fit-for-purpose safety management
system.
At first, KMB only had a fleet of 106 single-deck buses. However after World War
II, because of the huge influx of immigration from China, KMB bought 20 Daimler
double-deckers from England in 1949, their scale become larger. The KMB
extended its business and started to operate with some of KCR Feeder Bus (now MTR
Bus) routes, which are complimentary to passengers of the KCR East Rail (now MTR
East Rail Line) in 1999. Nowadays, it had been become the largest bus company in
Hong Kong by fleet size and number of bus routes.

IT Infrastructure:
IT Infrastructure Components:

Key / New Functions or Features:

The KMB allocated Several Servers for the basic need of their website. First, their
Web Server and Application Serve mainly
handles the HTTP protocol, such as sending back
an HTML page, simply passes the request to the
program best able to handle it. Second, their
Database Server handles to operate large
quantities of information. Thirdly, they have the
Backup Server responsible for backing up and
restoring files, such as folders, databases and
hard drives on a network in order to prevent the

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loss of data in the emergency situation.
At the security side, the KMB allocated Perimeter Firewall and Internal Firewall to
protect above-mentioned infrastructure components. To prevent the external attacks,
KMB applied the Perimeter Firewall, in order to control the type of data that flows
outside form the company network. On the other hand, they realize that not all attacks
are Internet-based, so KMB also use the Internal Firewall to protected sensitive
information from the users on the internal network, such as employees.
Benefits and Challenges of Managing IT Infrastructure:
For the benefits of managing IT Infrastructure, as we knew now the trend of world,
the influence of the internet is very powerful. Firstly, Managing the IT
Infrastructure can be a weapon for advertising. Also, it’s able to lower the cost of
human resources, for example, in the past KMB need to hire a lot of staff for
telephone customer service, now it only need to make use of IT Infrastructure such as
auto attendant or website online customer services are able to reduce the cost
effectively.
However, there a few to challenges about managing IT Infrastructure. When the
KMB company scales become larger, the demand of IT Infrastructure persisting
increase, in a result, the capital costs of Infrastructure will be higher. Also, the speed
of information update in the internet world is extremely fast, this lead the
improvement of technology, but on the other hand, the virus and the hacker are
become smarter and difficult to guard against them.

Privacy and Social Issues:

The KMB do highly attach on the problem of privacy. First, their policy to pledge to
comply with the requirements of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance, Chapter 486
of the Laws of the Hong Kong, when collecting, storing, using and transmitting
personal data, KMB will ensure compliance by their staff to the strictest standards of
security and confidentiality. In cases where they do collect Personal Data from
customer, they will tell the customer the use of collected data and give the opportunity
to "opt out". Second, once KMB have collected customer’s personal data, it will be
maintained securely in their system. The personal data will be accessed only by
their employees or contractors who are authorized to do so. Where personal data is
stored electronically in an independent server, it will be password-protected to protect
the customer privacy.
However, KMB did have some of social issues, the new on 2017 show that there are
20% of divers working over 12 hours as there current staff are not enough to satisfy
the service, but the KMB only replied that they will consider to adjust the wages but
the problem of lack of manpower is still unsolved. Furthermore the camera on the
bus, in the positive way, it is for the right of the driver when the accident occur, on the
other hand, it also caused the privacy problem of the diver. For example, there was a

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news in 2013 because the diver yawned at the working hour which captured by the
camera, and the driver get fired.

M-Commerce:
M-Commerce Infrastructure:
a.) The KMB & LW Smart-phone App was Launch
on March 2011 at the Apps Store Platform and it
awarded on September 2011. After that, KMB
expand this app to the platform of Google Play Store
and Windows Store.
b.) The KMB Free Wi-Fi service was Launch on
December 2012.

Key / New Functions and Features of M-Commerce:

a.) The key functions of the KMB & LW Smart-phone App are very diversifying.
First, the user may search the bus routes as their need immediately. Second, the
user is able to find out the arriving time of the specific bus route anytime. Third,
it’s also contains the function of the alight notification. Other additional function
such as app customer service, traffics emergency notification and bus station street
view, these function help user to understand the real-time situation of the
transportation and assist user to find the way to arrive their destination even they
are not familiar with the area around.
b.) To cater for the trend of IT, KMB Launched the service of KMB Free Wi-Fi
service, the Wi-Fi Service is provided by the CSL and the passenger may
maximum enjoy the service for 30 minutes per day. Also there are USB ports on
the bus for user to charge their device.

Benefits and Challenges of M-Commerce:

The convenience and Ubiquity of KMB & LW Smart phone App, help the user
(passenger) easy to find the nearest bus station and the bus arrival time, it is helping
the KMB to make profit indirectly, as these apps
and Wi-Fi service providing an easier way to use
their transportation service by understand their
real-time information, this also have the function of
advertising.
On the other hand, there are the challenges of these
M-commerce, the function of bus routes searcher,
bus arriving time notification and alight notification

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are highly depend on GPS, some of the bus routes in far from the city, the above
function will become imprecise. About the service of WiFi, as the router is installed
on the bus, so the signal will not be affect, but the quality of the service, such as the
surfing speed would also affecting by the difference area of bus route.

Social Media Marketing / E-Commerce:

a.) Since the passenger’s lost property are always find out, in the past, the procedure
from customer inquire to claim, it need to take a long period of time for research all
the bus terminal. In view of this, the KMB applied the Electronic station
management system to all bus terminal in 2009. This system contain the function
of handling lost property. The lost property information will be record in this
system to assist the staff to make a system research in once for all bus terminal, it
shorten the time when the customer call-in inquire. As a result, it increased the
efficiency of lost property searching service effectively.
b.) Moreover, The KMB put effort on the social
advertising concurrently. Such as, the KMB
Facebook page and Instagram account, the
KMB can obtain the opinion and feedback of
the costumers immediately form above
mentioned medium. It help KMB to build
better relationship between employee and
customer. Also, it provide a channel to
release their latest information, for example,
bus’s new painting or other promotional event
for advertising, in order to increase the revenue
eventually.
c.) KMB has established a database called Driving Tips in Special Attention Areas. It
has been uploaded to the KMB staff website. This database contain driving tips in
special attention areas across Kowloon, New Territories and Hong Kong Island, in
order to reminds the bus captains of points to note when driving. The database
was made by driving instructors at KMB’s Bus Captain Training School and by
operations staff at KMB depots. These special attention areas were selected
according to the consulting result with bus captains from different routes. The
busy corridors such as Nathan Road, Kwun Tong Road and Cheung Sha Wan Road,
also bus stops, entrances and exits of bus termini, traffic light junctions,
intersections and roundabouts are stored in this database. The driving tips and
suggestions are provided when the bus captain driving on each attention areas listed
in this database. Each points are provide the photos and layout drawings for the
easy reference of bus captains. The database allowing bus caption search for
information by depot, bus route, latest location record or latest bus route record.The
KMB will fine-tune the database in the second phase to diversify it by add-in more
reminders for each route and keep-on update the latest and accurate information.

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E-Learning / E-Training:
As we knew, the KMB is take the quality of
staff seriously. Except the KMB Bus Captain
Training School, if also have the internal
website for their staff’s training practice.
Their staff are require to complete the training
tasks on the website of
http://training.kmb.org.hk before their
pavement training, it reduce the training time
and cost, and to the staff it is more flexible than
regular class.

Information Security and Fraud Protection:

Nowadays, the internet are full of malicious software ans hacker, the KMB step in to
the world of internet mean it need to face the situation above, such as Pharming and
Spyware, to prevent the data lacking or web page redirection, the KMB applied the
system of identity management to specifies only a portion of system user can access
to the terminal database, in order to reduce the risk of information lacking. On the
other hand, they set up the business continuity planning for the emergency situation
like Denial-of-service attacks, plans for restoration of disrupted services as soon as
possible when situation happen.
Also, the security threats are very often originate internal now, besides the Internal
Firewall protecting the information from the internal users, KMB always implement
the Patches to cover the vulnerability and bugs of the commercial software. And for
internal documents, they used the encryption and send the password by e-mail
respectively, these can reduce the rick of read by unintended recipients when there are
mistakenly send to the wrong person.

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Managing IT System:
As a largest bus company in Hong
Kong, the KMB holding a extremely
large database, these result in the
systems efficiency require become
very high . Therefore, they choose
to use the Data warehouse to store
their data, it stores current and
historical data form many core
operation transaction systems, data
marts is used by data warehouse in
order to focuses on single subject or
line of business. In addition, to
handle large amount of data, they also applied the technology of data mining for their
information processing, whose main feature is the extraction, conversion, analysis and
other modeling of large volumes of business data in commercial databases, extracts
key data that aids business decision-making, in order to make their system more
efficient.
The KMB start to outsourcing the IT repair and maintenance service in 2016, KMB
will tend to restructure the IT department in the coming year, in order to cater for
company's further development.

Summary:
The Kowloon Motor Bus Company Limited (KMB) was only a transportation
company at the beginning, but after the IT technology become common, it started to
step in the world of IT Infrastructure, form build-up a website for propagate to make
the apps of KMB & LW Smart-phone App. Furthermore, when the era of smart-phone
came, they hold the opportunities and start the KMB Free Wi-Fi service. The KMB
is following the trend of era and progress further by using the leading-edge
technology.

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References:
Website:

1.) 香港巴士大典 -九巴龍運智能手機應用程式

http://hkbus.wikia.com/wiki/%E4%B9%9D%E5%B7%B4%E9%BE%8D%E9%81%
8B%E6%99%BA%E8%83%BD%E6%89%8B%E6%A9%9F%E6%87%89%E7%94
%A8%E7%A8%8B%E5%BC%8F

2.) 香港巴士大典 - KMB Free WiFi

http://hkbus.wikia.com/wiki/KMB_Free_WiFi
3.) KMB official website
http://www.kmb.hk/en/
4.) Internal Firewall Design
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc700827.aspx
5.) Microsoft Windows Server
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd996637(v=ws.10).aspx
6.) VJMEDIA
http://www.vjmedia.com.hk/articles/2013/08/30/47598/
7.) hket
https://topick.hket.com/article/1932829/2%E6%88%90%E8%BB%8A%E9%95%B7
%E6%97%A5%E5%81%9A%E9%80%BE12%E5%B0%8F%E6%99%82%20%E4%
B9%9D%E5%B7%B4%E6%9C%80%E5%A4%9A

8.) 九巴網上課程

http://training.kmb.org.hk/login/index.php

9.) 九巴新系統快捷認領失物

http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20090326/00176_087.html
10.) KMB Launches Hong Kong’s First Database of ”Driving Tips in Special
Attention Areas”
http://www.kmb.hk/en/news/press/archives/news201010181112.html

11.) 國泰九巴 IT 部炒 27 人

https://hk.news.appledaily.com/local/daily/article/20160615/19654849

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