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“Open systems like the HP NonStop server are
needed for flexibility, both in terms of making
changes at a lower cost—reducing total cost
of ownership—and shortening time to market
for new features, products, and services.”
Gianni Marostica, president, Sabre Airline Passenger Solutions
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“The NonStop system affords us the highest
levels of availability, transaction processing
speed, and scalability.”
Gianni Marostica, president, Sabre Airline Passenger Solutions
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SabreSonic solutions bring more flexibility, lower cost to dynamic airline industry
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Gianni Marostica states the case
clearly: “Our industry is changing,
and our customers’ industry is
changing. Airlines need to be quicker,
they need to be more flexible, they
need to be more cost-oriented,
and they need to push innovative
solutions out to their customers in
order to differentiate themselves.
We built our SabreSonic solutions to
meet these requirements. And our
partnership with HP has really
helped bring our vision to life and
execute on it.”
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| Marostica is president of Sabre
Airline Passenger Solutions, a division
of the travel commerce giant Sabre
Holdings. He oversees SabreSonic,
a flexible, high-performance suite
of passenger management solutions
built on an open systems architecture.
The SabreSonic solution fits airlines
of all sizes, in all stages of
growth, in all regions of the world,
and utilizing any business model. It
can be implemented as a single,
fully integrated solution or as standalone
components that deliver only
the desired functionality.
The core
components of SabreSonic—which
include SabreSonic Shop (shopping
and pricing for airline travel),
SabreSonic Res (consolidated customer
content for a single view of
the customer), and SabreSonic
Ticket (fulfillment, including innovative
solutions for e-ticketing)—all
rely on HP NonStop servers to help
airline companies capitalize on
change and move even faster than
the speed of the industry.
An evolving link
There’s no question that the rate of
change is taking off in the airline
industry. In the United States, it
started with deregulation in 1978;
more recently, the emergence of
low-cost carriers and the advent of
the Internet have increased the
state of flux even more dramatically.
Similar factors are influencing airline
companies around the world.
The link between business and
information technology has evolved
to keep pace with these changes.
“In the past, especially during the
regulated environment, prices were
basically fixed from a market perspective,”
explained Marostica. “If
you wanted to increase or decrease
a price, you had to get government
approval as well as agreement from
the airlines. There was very little
change, and so IT was essentially
geared toward maintenance.”
But deregulation boosted competition
sixfold in North America,
and Europe has seen a similar
increase since the industry was
deregulated there in 1996. This
growth in competition has forced
airlines to become more flexible in
order to stay competitive. In turn,
the need for flexibility has driven
changes in business models, practices,
and processes, along with a
fundamental shift in the role of the
IT infrastructure.
“Everybody knows that technology
is an enabler that makes it possible
to respond to market demands
much more quickly,” asserted
Marostica. “Deregulation and growing
customer demands are driving
change in the market. So is the
Internet, which is making everything
more transparent in terms of
prices and destinations. IT really
can help enable the flexibility that
today’s airline industry needs.”
Changing the infrastructure
The need for greater flexibility was
one of the main reasons Sabre
Holdings decided to move key
applications from its long-time IBM
TPF environment to the HP
NonStop platform. “We obviously
study the marketplace and understand
where the industry is going,”
said Marostica. “Although our existing
IT system provided solid performance,
it did not lend itself readily to
change. Open systems like the HP
NonStop server are needed for
flexibility, both in terms of making
changes at a lower cost—reducing
total cost of ownership—and shortening
time to market for new
features, products, and services.”
The numbers are in. Although the
architects of the system projected a
40 percent reduction in total cost of
ownership (TCO), the actual results
are even higher. “In terms of my
specific business, it’s sitting at a
good, solid 45 percent,” stated
Marostica. He attributes the TCO
reduction to a combination of several
things, including shorter cycle time
for transactions such as fare updates,
and less development time required
to make necessary changes.
Flexible HP technology
In Marostica’s view, the flexibility
and performance of HP technology
make it an ideal match for the rigorous
requirements imposed by
SabreSonic solutions. “The NonStop
system affords us the highest levels
of availability, transaction processing
speed, and scalability,” he said.
“The technology allows us to scale
up or down very quickly, depending
on what the requirements are; it
replaces the mainframe-based solution,
which required much more
time and effort to make changes.” |
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Sabre Airline Passenger Solutions uses
HP products throughout its operations,
with HP NonStop, Integrity, and ProLiant
servers at all tiers of the data center.
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SabreSonic Shop allows airlines to
offer their customers the opportunity
to search multiple airlines, flights, and
fares for desirable itineraries. It also
calculates the exact price for ticketing,
refund, and exchange purposes. NonStop
servers provide the real-time transaction
engine, including a master database
with schedules, fares, rules, and availability
status; ProLiant servers and an
Integrity server farm that uses the
Linux operating system—with replicated
databases linked to the back-end
NonStop system database—handle
high-transaction shopping functions.
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SabreSonic Res gives airlines real-time
information flow on passengers across
all touchpoints. The ability to develop
and maintain robust passenger profile
information makes it possible to improve
customer service through the entire
travel service cycle. HP technology
includes a NonStop server–based Zero
Latency Enterprise (ZLE) architecture
and operational data store, integrating
customer information from all applications
to provide consolidated customer content.
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SabreSonic Ticket makes it possible
for airlines to establish a link to the
SabreSonic Integrated Electronic
Ticketing hub for cost-effective,
efficient connectivity between carriers
and their ticketing partner airlines. It
also helps airline customers manage
agent sales reporting and cash drawer
functionality, leading to cost savings and
improved customer service. The underlying
platform is the NonStop server.
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Interoperability is also an essential
feature, and one that has contributed
significantly to lower total
cost of ownership. “As customers
become more sophisticated in their
use of the Internet, they are no longer
looking only at fares,” continued
Marostica. “Now they look at fares
and dates of travel and potential
destination and cost. The seamless
interoperability of HP technology
has allowed us to partition the
workload in a way that makes good
business and financial sense.”
For example, the pricing function
in SabreSonic Shop requires
continuous availability and therefore
resides on the NonStop server.
The shopping function, by contrast—which puts higher demands on
processors and memory, but often
does not result in bookings—runs
on a powerful but lower-cost HP
Integrity server farm using the
Linux® operating system. Recently,
the addition of 64-bit Opteron
processor–based machines to the
server farm has reduced TCO even
more. “The fact that these servers all
work together so well lets us take
advantage of the best of both
worlds,” stated Marostica. |
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