In a move that highlights the importance of the right platform to support today's dynamic, Web-based applications, Galileo International is the only global distribution services (GDS) provider with the capability of updating its airfares database and making it available to users within minutes rather than hours, while still delivering in excess of 99.9% availability.
Galileo, whose systems are used globally by travel heavyweights such as South African Airways (SAA), selected Sun Microsystems for the company's newly revamped, industry-leading GlobalFares airfare-pricing system.
Replacing part of its mainframe systems with Sun Fire 6800 servers and the Solaris Operating Environment (OE), Galileo has been able to reduce its total cost of ownership (TCO) by 30%. The installation is also expected to help save the company tens of millions of dollars in hardware maintenance and programming costs.
"In the GDS environment, faring is subject to the most growth and change. That's why we decided to migrate to Sun's scalable and reliable Solaris architecture," comments Mickey Lutz, CIO at Galileo International.
"Our next-generation GlobalFares system and technology supporting it, gives us a key competitive advantage, we are now positioned to more effectively support today's ever-changing marketplace."
"Sun is focused on helping industry leaders like Galileo maximise their operations quickly and efficiently," comments Stefano Mattiello, managing director of Sun Microsystems SA. "Migrating to the Sun platform enables a company to drive the flexibility they need to deliver services, while benefiting from TCO."
Galileo's GlobalFares system enables the company to load fares faster and at a much lower cost, thus meeting the demand placed by its end-users and travel Web sites.
Prior to implementation, Sun worked with Galileo on designing a solution architecture that would meet the quality-of-service requirements demanded by its environment. Sun consultants performed extensive analysis resulting in more than 30 architecture recommendations, which helped improve server utilisation by nearly 20%.
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