Taking hotel reservations to the cloud
Replacing a decades-old on-premise reservation system with a flexible cloud-based platform
At a Glance:
When a global hotel chain needed to replace their decades-old reservation system with a more flexible, scalable cloud-based platform, they contacted us.
Customer Challenge
At more than two decades old, our client’s centralized reservation system was ill-equipped to handle the needs of a global enterprise. It was unable to support our client’s level of website traffic, and when it crashed, not only were reservations lost, but the entire website went down, costing our client thousands in lost revenue. Our client was also falling behind competitors in their ability to keep pace with customers’ expectations of their online experiences.
On the back end, new projects were costly to implement and slow to deliver to market, due to the cumbersome process of integrating new features into the legacy system. Our client was also finding it difficult to keep their IT team staffed, as few programmers have experience with the older applications the system was using.
Why They Chose Us
We had already worked with this client on numerous projects, in areas ranging from identity management to web engine performance. Because of our proven track record and the depth of our experience with their systems and processes, they knew we were the right choice for this project.
Our Results
After meeting with stakeholders to understand the technical and business requirements for the new system, we architected, designed, and implemented a cloud-based platform that achieved all our client’s objectives, including:
- Improved performance: The new platform can process transactions six times faster than the legacy system.
- Automatic scalability: Load spikes no longer affect performance, as the platform adds capacity when needed and releases it after the surge passes.
- Alternate growth opportunities: The platform enables our client to expand their services in vacation rental shopping and booking.
- Future project cost savings and faster time-to-market: New projects can be launched more quickly and at a lower cost in an architecture designed for flexibility.
- Talent availability: More programmers are familiar with the tools the new platform uses, making it easier for our client to attract high-caliber talent.
- Improved performance: The platform enhances our client’s capabilities in working with travel agencies, franchisees, and other partners.
- Improved partner connectivity: The new platform can process transactions six times faster than the legacy system.
Our client now has a flexible, scalable platform that enabled them to reduce the costs and risks associated with the old system, accelerate time-to-market for new projects, and better serve their partners and customers.