A leading travel agency in Japan expands its online travel reservation portal capabilities, allowing for future growth to maximize sales opportunities while controlling costs.
Done.
Nippon Travel Agency found the ideal mix in its solution from Unisys—with Intel Itanium 2-based technology and the Linux operating system. A Unisys ES7000 server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 64-bit gives Nippon Travel a flexible, powerful, mission-critical platform, with the ability to scale up to accommodate future expansion. All while providing the stability the portal demands at a reasonable cost—and a 67-percent improvement in price/performance.
How did Unisys do it?
Tabi Plaza is the reservation portal website for Japan’s Nippon Travel Agency—providing customers with 24/7 travel services. Started in November 2000 as a reservation service strictly for hotels and other lodging facilities, the website expanded its service offerings to include reservations for transportation including airplanes, buses, sightseeing taxis and rental cars.
A membership-based site, Tabi Plaza boasts approximately 700,000 registrants who can participate in the Tabi Plaza rewards program, which returns 1 percent of the total amount of charges back to travelers. The site has become a popular destination on the Web for making reservations, whether for tours, leisure activities or business trips. Tabi Plaza also incorporates information from a variety of third-party partners, including airlines, rental-car companies and many others.
But as the number of hits to the site increased—the hotel section of the portal alone receives approximately 1.7 million page views per month—so did the demands on the underlying infrastructure. For example, summer is the busiest period for the website. But because the system’s processing capabilities were taxed, response times degraded and the reduced service levels meant that customers often failed to make successful reservations.
Flexible, expandable server capabilities
Anticipating another busy travel season, improving the Tabi Plaza system infrastructure became an imperative. To keep costs low, Nippon Travel decided to focus on Linux environments and Intel processor-based servers to replace its existing UNIX environment. Because its ultimate goal is to provide visitors with reliable, 24/7 service, the company sought expert help to identify the proper platform to meet its unique needs.
That’s when Nippon Travel turned to Unisys.
The results showed that the ES7000 server running Linux produced results that were better by a factor of almost two compared to a UNIX-based solution.
With specialized benchmarking expertise and tools, Unisys engineering team conducted a series of tests to compare the processing abilities of the ES7000 server with a Linux operating environment to UNIX. Nippon Travel needed to know with certainty that the new system could handle the Tabi Plaza workload—and provide room for further expansion. The results showed that the ES7000 server running Linux produced results that were better by a factor of almost two compared to a UNIX-based solution.
Given the success of the benchmark tests, Unisys consultants recommended an Itanium 2-based ES7000 Aries Model 420 server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 64-bit version.
The solution would ensure significant performance improvement at a manageable cost. ES7000 servers offer configurability and performance characteristics that meet the high demands of large database servers and 64-bit application servers. And, the large memory access features in 64-bit systems offer dramatic improvements in database access—in Nippon Travel’s case, an Oracle 9i database.
Results Delivered
Server scalability. Exceptional price/performance
For Nippon Travel, eliminating UNIX and moving to a more cost-effective environment based on Unisys ES7000 servers running the Linux operating system has delivered big benefits. The company’s own studies show that performance improved by 37 percent while hardware costs decreased by 18 percent. The result? A 67-percent improvement in price/performance over the old UNIX based environment! In addition, the new solution has resulted in increased reservations and better service for Nippon Travel’s customers.
Upon completion of the migration, the Tabi Plaza website experienced lower server utilization, and an immediate improvement in response time. With eight processors online for the launch, Nippon Travel plans to add four units at a time, expanding to a maximum of 16 processors, depending on its needs.
The new powerful system infrastructure and flexible software capabilities have given Nippon Travel’s Tabi Plaza team the ability to offer additional service functions. But maintaining stability in their current services remains their highest priority.
Unisys worldwide support for Linux and its knowledgeable technical experts are a valuable asset to Kojiro Yamamoto, assistant manager for Tabi Plaza Team, Media Mix Sales, Business Planning Headquarters, Nippon Travel Agency.
“Unisys provides Linux specialists and has built a total Linux support system to assist its customers. We would request their support without any hesitation,” Yamamoto says.
"The potential for reduction in system costs over the short- and long-term also made the Unisys solution very attractive."
Kojiro Yamamoto
Assistant Manager, Tabi Plaza Team
Nippon Travel Agency
And with improvements in performance and reliability from the ES7000 server running the Linux operating environment, reservations can be completed reliably—which means Nippon Travel benefits from an enhanced revenue stream.
“The Itanium 2 processor-based ES7000 server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS gives our infrastructure the necessary stability,” says Yamamoto. “The potential for reduction in system costs over the short- and long-term also made the Unisys solution very attractive.”
