REGION: Europe INDUSTRY: Retail / Travel SOLUTION: Workload Automation 3,600 travel agencies rely on timely processing to keep over 163,000 hotel beds in 28 countries filled • Batch processes update prices and availability of flights, hotels, and all-inclusive trips every 15 minutes • Migration of three schedulers to one centralized workload automation platform • More than 4,000 automated jobs each day without manual intervention TUI AG is one of Europe’s largest travel firms operating more than 3,600 travel agencies, more than 100 aircraft, and around 300 hotels with 163,000 beds in 28 countries. In addition, 12,000 corporate travel agencies under TUI serve business customers in approximately 80 countries. Business Challenge These statistics hint at the volume of information that TUI must process reliably and just-in-time. ‘TUI InfoTec’ is an internal IT service provider that assumes sole responsibility for all of the company’s major batch processes. These jobs involve tasks like nightly backups of the central mainframe travelbooking system as well as subsequent reorganization of the DB2 database. Processing of data collected online during the previous day is the next step. Not all batch jobs wait for night to fall: timely processing is also needed during regular office hours. More than 3,500 jobs are generated in these hours, dealing especially with the central booking system that was controlled by CA-7. Analyses aided by the TUI data warehouses (NT and Unix systems) also depend on regularly updated data stores. The necessary data selections and replications have been running since 2001 through Automic ONE Automation, which handles about 1,000 jobs. The data warehouse at TUI was supplied through the Tivoli Workload Scheduler (about 1,000 jobs) and had the same requirements. “For years, TUI employed three different job scheduling tools in parallel and used them to control the individual procedures,” explains Wolfgang Utesch, Director of Production Planning at TUI InfoTec. “Each scheduler was assigned to certain system platforms and applications. What all batch jobs had in common was their high level of relevance for the company’s operations. For this reason, there was a desire to control and monitor all applications and systems from just a single centralized point. This approach would eliminate many potential operational risks. In the final analysis, availability and security are decisive.” The Solution ONE Automation proved to be very well suited to TUI’s needs. One criterion was the ability to support all platforms. However, the high availability concept and disaster recovery features of the ONE Automation platform were of critical importance for complete migration of the job controller, because interruption of important processing could not be tolerated. The ONE Automation database server and all data were mirrored in two separate computing centers. All processes run in parallel on several clustered servers. This allows for flexible scaling of the ONE Automation installation. Yet another requirement of the platform was to smoothly migrate old jobs into the new environment. Automic offers the tools necessary for migrating all current job scheduling systems to ONE Automation. This automates and acceler- “The success of TUI depends a great deal on the reliability of its background processing. With ONE Automation we are playing it safe, since this product provides the much-celebrated single point of control” Wolgang Utesch, Director of Production Planning ates the conversion. According to Wolfgang Utesch, “Automic provided a very professional support during the entire migration.” Some of the processes demonstrate how important job scheduling is at TUI AG: Batch processes handle printing and sending of travel documents from the online booking system. These peripherals to the core application are highly relevant for the company’s profitability and also directly influence customer satisfaction. But, if a customer books a last-minute trip and plans to depart soon, a ONE Automation batch will perform the updated processing and immediately execute abbreviated production of the travel documents (‘flexible ticket printing’). Employees at the travel agencies and airports also depend on timely execution of batch jobs in other ways. For instance, batch processes update prices and availability of flights, hotels and all-inclusive trips every 15 minutes. The rapid cyclical processing makes them almost like online data without negatively affecting the system’s performance. Wolfgang Utesch continues: “For the future, we plan further international consolidation of IT resources so that job and production volume will continue to rise. Booking systems at acquired tour operators are always a core element of competition, so these are largely preserved. But in the future their production will also take place through the ONE Automatio platform.” When this happens, ONE Automation’s time-zone support will be a good match for TUI’s needs. “What all batch jobs had in common was their high level of relevance to the company’s operations. For this reason, there was a desire to control and monitor all applications and systems from just a single centralized point.” Wolgang Utesch Director of Production Planning Automic is the world’s most comprehensive platform for automating businesses. Founded in 1985, Automic pioneered the largest, independent, globally deployed automation platform which powers enterprise, application and infrastructure processes. Now, as the consumerization of IT accelerates, Automic is reimagining how organizations integrate next generation service models such as Cloud, DevOps and Big Data. By challenging conventional thinking, Automic enables its customers to be faster, smarter, and in control. Automic – the standard in business automation. www.automic.com
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