Amadeus Global Travel Distribution: Amadeus Global Travel Distribution Case Study
Always One Step Ahead Of Every Challenge With Premium Support
Solution: |
Enterprise Portal Rationalization |
Product: |
BEA WebLogic Portal® 8.1 |
Industry: |
Transportation |
Amadeus was founded in 1987 by Air France, Iberia Airlines, and Lufthansa. The company rapidly gained global prominence, but along with its success and explosive growth came significant challenges. One of the most imposing of those challenges was managing a sprawling information technology (IT) infrastructure. Following a series of acquisitions, Amadeus e-Travel found itself operating three distinct Internet reservation systems. Integration was limited and maintenance costs were very high. Amadeus e-Travel undertook the "Atlantic Project" to unify all three systems and replace the rigid, proprietary technology with an open, standards-compliant environment.
Amadeus consolidated the three systems, including C++ code, onto the Java-based BEA platform. In addition to simplifying its IT environment, the move to an open platform allowed Amadeus e-Travel to link its reservation engine to many third party systems that had been unreachable in the past, such as low-fare air carriers. Amadeus was able to reuse many of the reservation elements; e.g., creation of passenger profiles, pricing, etc. This made it relatively simple to add a corporate layer that takes into account business rules, such as contracts linking companies with airlines. In just a few months, Amadeus e-Travel built and launched a solution for the corporate market.
The combined reservation engine received 350 million visits in 2003 and served up 800 million page views. And unlike typical reservation engines, the Amadeus offers complete solutions for its customers. For instance, it supports frequent-flyer programs for airlines that utilize Planitgo as their reservation system. Some other booking engines can do no more than prompt customers to enter frequent-flyer numbers that are then passed along to other systems. Amadeus discovered the ease of development and management has lowered its IT costs, allowing it to pass savings on to its travel industry customers. The addition of a corporate product and the ability to sell travel insurance is an important strategic step in positioning Amadeus for sustainable growth.
Solution: |
Online Reservations System |
Product: |
BEA WebLogic Server® 8.1 |
Industry: |
Transportation |
Country: |
Germany (Global implementation) |
Amadeus is a global leader in technology and distribution solutions for the travel and tourism industry. Within the space of a few years, it has become the leading international IT service provider of eCommerce applications in its sector. The Internet business of over 65 airlines and numerous other players is directly dependent on peak performance, availability and security of its online reservation system, Amadeus e-Retail Engine (Planitgo) running on BEA WebLogic Server®.
The successful business partnership with BEA provided a multi-track, effective solution. The comprehensive premium support combines ongoing personal support, continuous proactive measures, and a very effective real-time 24x7 response mechanism for cases requiring escalation. This guarantees that Amadeus customers are able to build on a system with high availability at any time.
Amadeus guarantees its customers very high availability-which can only be achieved through a large number of scaled security concepts and precisely planned measures. The innovative partnership with BEA not only ensures compliance with very short support response times of a maximum of 30 minutes within each time zone, but also operational support within a continuously optimized systems architecture.