Overview
In its drive to realize the vision of creating a new marketplace for personalized travel, one of Sabre’s strategic imperative focus is Technology Transformation that allows Sabre to significantly enhance its technology and product offerings. A vital aspect of this transformation is Mainframe Offload, which envisages to migrate Global Distribution System (GDS) transactions from legacy system to open systems / cloud-based solutions.
Ticketing is a critical capability under Retailing, Distribution & Fulfilment, which form the core tenets of Sabre’s product offerings to airlines & agencies around the world. Travel agencies widely use an XML based Ticketing Service eTicketCouponLLSRQ that interfaces with mainframe to procure the agency ticket details from the GDS & also gathers the ticket flight coupon status from the airline.
Challenge
While creating a seamless transition from Mainframe to Open Systems without impacting the existing functionality, the main challenge was the high volume (in millions) of average daily transactions that agencies utilize the ticketing service for. Testing and Activation also posed a hurdle, as the transformation needed to be seamless across 6,000 global travel agencies that utilize the functionality.
What Sabre did
The members of Team BlendIT leveraged their collective talent to develop a brand-new blended service which can orchestrate and procure ticket details from GDS, and ticket flight coupon status from the airline – entirely using open systems. The team also ensured that the transition would not impact existing functionalities. This effort effectively reduces the PSS footprint for ticket database access.
SuperBlitzcode 2020 to the rescue. Team BlendIT breaks new ground!
Team BlendIT was a participating team in
SuperBlitzcode 2020 (The latest edition of the yearly 3-day hackathon at Sabre’s Global Capability Center, that aims to solve key business challenges facing the travel industry). The Team created a viable solution for Mainframe IO Cost Savings for PSS HAWK Datamart, and to accelerate Sabre’s roadmap for moving GDS transactions out of PSS to open systems.
Working in tandem with the Ticketing team,
Team BlendIT quickly productionized the new solution, leading to customer delight!
Some of the key approaches to the solution included:
• Sunset the TPFC Low Level Service Sabre Data Stream (SDS) path through invoking offloaded service leveraging existing Ticketing Web Services
• Developed a REST/JSON service in addition to the offloaded SOAP/XML service
• Cucumber framework leveraged for testing
Results
• Reduction in the PSS footprint
• Moving away from mainframes resulting in cost savings and performance enhancements
• Accelerating our roadmap for moving GDS transactions out of PSS to open systems
