Go Voyages relies on a set of around 100
IBM® System x® servers to deliver frontoffice
and consumer-facing web access
to its holiday packages, linked to IBM
Power® servers that deliver high-speed
cache services and connections to all four
worldwide travel reservation systems – an
industry-beating combination
1. IBM Systems & Technology Group Travel and Transportation
Smarter Computing
Go Voyages sails in front
of the competition
With smarter computing from IBM
Online travel company Go Voyages of Paris, France, originally
Overview specialized in airline tickets. The company has extended its offerings
to include accommodation, train travel, insurance, cruises and short-
The need and long-term vacation packages. Go Voyages has 450 employees
Go Voyages, an online travel operator,
needed the ability to manage annual
supporting web sites in English, French, German, Italian and
web-based business growth of up to Portuguese, among others.
30 percent with intensive behavioral
analytics.
Managing business growth
The solution Against industry growth of around 5 percent a year, Go Voyages
Go Voyages relies on a set of around 100 achieves growth of up to 30 percent annually, which places huge strains
IBM® System x® servers to deliver front-
office and consumer-facing web access
on its IT infrastructure. Part of the Go Voyages business model is to
to its holiday packages, linked to IBM analyze customer behavior based on response to specific travel offers
Power® servers that deliver high-speed and discounts, and the volume of data threatened to overwhelm the
cache services and connections to all four
existing systems. Go Voyages wanted to create a solution that would
worldwide travel reservation systems – an
industry-beating combination. solve the immediate challenges and scale continuously to deal with
future growth, and offer the widest possible choice by connecting
The benefit
– unusually in the industry – to all four global reservations systems
Being able to connect its four global
reservations systems means that Go (Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and WorldSpan).
Voyages is able to offer a far greater
choice to its consumers, while the IBM
Power servers provide super-quick cache
Giving customers more choice
services to more than 2 million daily Go Voyages now offers its customers an improved search interface with
unique web searches on the System x over 700 parameters, connecting to all four major Global Distribution
servers. Even with 700 query parameters, Systems (GDS) (Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and WorldSpan) for travel
the new IBM solution is able to process
customer requests twice as quickly. booking, which provides a great competitive differentiator.
Behavioral analytics enable marketing
teams to create campaigns that increase As enquiries arrive from the web sites, the company replicates flight
successfully completed sales.
data and requests real-time from the GDS services, including hotels,
car agents, holiday providers and many more, to help create complete
customer holiday packages. The IBM solution makes it possible to
interact with these huge databases and deliver super-fast customer
response at the same time.
The IBM solution allows Go Voyages to compare prices internally
from the GDS providers to propose the best price to online customers.
For example, during the air travel disruptions caused by the Iceland
volcanic ash, Go Voyages was able to find flights for stranded clients
when many other travel agencies could not.
2. IBM Systems & Technology Group Travel and Transportation
Smarter Computing
Responding to customer behavior
Designed for Data Go Voyages deployed a business intelligence solution, built on
• Customer behavioral analysis with IBM hardware and software technologies, to create and support a
advanced IBM tools including IBM
comprehensive data storage environment for the company’s travel
Cognos software and IBM InfoSphere
Information Server, Information Analyzer, data and payment records, and enable system-wide customer data to
DataStage and Change Data Capture be integrated and analyzed using the software’s predictive modeling
allows Go Voyages to interpret huge and capability.
growing quantities of web transaction
data and convert enquiries to larger
numbers of completed sales. For example, customers looking to purchase an airline ticket from Paris
to New York may be discouraged by the high price. Using behavioral
Tuned to the Task
• Web services are assigned to IBM
analytics based on the IBM solution, Go Voyages prompts alternative
System x servers, while the flights engine routes with a short layover with substantial savings. The analysis allows
and back-office business systems are Go Voyages to tailor the response to flight enquiries and increase the
handled by the IBM POWER platform.
probability of ticket sales.
Managed in the Cloud
• Go Voyages has created a single, Powerful, reliable IBM hardware
flexible and scalable pool of computing
Customer-facing web, interactive and business intelligence services are
resources, and with IBM SAN Volume
Controller providing shared storage supported by 120 IBM System x3550 M2 and IBM System x3650 M2
capacity and simplified data management servers running the Microsoft Windows 2003 operating system.
regardless of the underlying storage
device.
The heavy-duty back-end “flights engine” management solution, as
Driving Innovation well as accounting, finance and payroll solutions, are run on six IBM
• The IBM technologies enable Go Voyages Power 520 and IBM Power 570 platforms, running the IBM i operating
to sustain its 30 percent growth rates and
win business ahead of the competition
system.
with integrated real-time flight data.
Three IBM System Storage DS4800 and two IBM System Storage
DS5020 devices store the company’s data, controlled through two IBM
System Storage SAN Volume Controller clusters. For both application
servers and the storage, advanced IBM virtualization technology
insulates the users from the physical devices themselves, which are
managed automatically by the IBM software.
The IBM System x servers offer the potential to deal with web
transaction continuous growth, while heavy-duty database processing
is handled by the ultra-scalable IBM Power Systems platform. The
IBM SAN Volume Controller brings all the available storage capacity,
including the IBM System Storage DS4800 and DS5020 devices, into a
single, easily-managed storage pool controlled from a single interface.
The solution includes IBM Cognos TM1 software, which analyzes
the performance of the company’s offerings and provides reporting
capabilities for customer transactions along with financial and
accounting processes. IBM InfoSphere Change Data Capture and IBM
InfoSphere DataStage software solutions ensure data quality to enable
efficient data exchanges and synchronization between customer-facing
and back-end systems to provide real-time flight status information to
the web.
3. IBM Systems & Technology Group Travel and Transportation
Smarter Computing
Based on the data from IBM InfoSphere Information Server
(Information Analyzer, DataStage and Change Data Capture), Go
Solution Components
Voyages uses IBM Cognos software to analyze customer activity and
Software behavior, tracking the enquiry and sales stages to discover why he or
• IBM® Cognos® she stopped searching and did not purchase a ticket.
• IBM InfoSphere® Change Data Capture
• IBM InfoSphere Information Analyzer
• IBM InfoSphere Information Server Real-time synchronization between the back-end flights engine and
• IBM InfoSphere DataStage customer-facing web sites ensures that travel bookings are confirmed
• IBM PowerVM™ with valid data, and payments are transferred immediately to the
• IBM i
• IBM System Storage® SAN Volume company accounting systems.
Controller
• Microsoft Windows InfoSphere Change Data Capture software provides real-time
Servers replication of flight data between systems, and eliminated the need for
• IBM System x3550 M2 what had been forecast as a four-month data integration program.
• IBM System x3650 M2
• IBM Power® 520 Express
• IBM Power 570
Boosting performance and sales numbers
• IBM System Storage DS4800 Even with growing enquiry volumes, 700 query parameters and
• IBM System Storage DS5020 connection to all four GDS providers, the new IBM solution is able
to process customer requests twice as quickly, thus handling twice the
number of travel enquiries from within the same IT landscape.
The insight generated from behavioral analysis is used by the Go
Voyages marketing team to develop better marketing promotions. This
helps to ensure that more customers complete their ticket bookings,
generating increased sales, which are rising annually by 30 percent – 25
percent more than the industry average.
For more information
To learn more about smarter computing from IBM and how we can
help you integrate, automate, protect and transform your IT, contact
your IBM sales representative or IBM business partner, or visit:
ibm.com/smartercomputing