Mainframe upgrade key to Kuoni's holiday plans

IBM drives Kuoni's customers to more big blue skies

The gloomy economy has done little to dampen Britons' enthusiasm for sun and sand, according to tour operator Kuoni Travel. The financial climate has, however, convinced many holidaymakers to look for last-minute bargains.

Kuoni has responded by increasing the number of late-availability holidays on its web site. But to do so, it had to upgrade some of the back-office systems that support the site.

Kuoni set up a team for negotiating last-minute deals with airlines and hotels and started to upgrade the web site and back-end hardware last October, reports Matt Rooke, Kuoni’s e-business director.

It upgraded its IBM Power i platform, which previously supported mail users, web site and core business applications. Working with IBM premier business partner Apex, Kuoni was the first business in Europe to upgrade to the new Power6 i550, from its earlier Power5 system.

With customers looking for value for money, Kuoni needed to be able to negotiate better prices from airlines and hoteliers, as well as organise transfers to and from hotels, and provide on-site holiday reps to deal with problems on the ground. It then needed to ensure packages were updated regularly.

Prior to the upgrade, Kuoni's web site was updated once a day, and customers often had to trawl through several pages to find the holidays they were looking for, admits Rooke.

After upgrading from a four-way IBM Power5 i550 system to an eight-way Power6 i550, Kuoni was able to triple the system's computational capability, without increasing its need for rack space.

Another benefit of the new system was its ability to be upgraded without taking down Kuoni's web site.

Network connectivity to the site, which Kuoni hosts itself, is provided through a BT 34Mbit/s leased line.

The upgraded web front end deployed on the new hardware was rewritten internally by Kuoni's developers using Asynchronous Javascript and XML software technology. It gives a much more dynamic and more searchable site, which offers about a third more destinations and the ability to search five months ahead rather than just three months.

Kuoni says that with the new hardware and rewritten web front end, the system had already achieved a return on investment three times over since its installation and deployment in December, and had increased online business by 100 per cent.

Swiss-based Kuoni employs more than 7,500 staff in 300 offices globally, and its turnover in 2008 was about £2.8bn.