Global travel agency adopts Dimension Data’s cloud services

By Digital News Asia September 22, 2017

The new infrastructure will support all of the travel group’s lines of business
IT environment is now quicker, scalable, more cost-effective and more secure

Global travel agency adopts Dimension Data’s cloud services

IN A move to support the growth of its business, one of the world’s largest travel agencies, has chosen Dimension Data, to plan, execute and manage the migration of its core IT infrastructure to the cloud.

The project involves the complete transformation of the travel agency’s core IT resources based in Hong Kong from an on-premise solution into a hybrid IT infrastructure hosted on Dimension Data’s Managed Cloud Platform (MCP).

The new infrastructure will support all of the travel group’s lines of business, from flights to cruises, hotels, resorts and car rentals, and users in multiple geographical locations including offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai and numerous other countries in Southeast Asia.

“Travel is a fast, competitive and extremely demanding industry that involves linking many transaction parties, managing a lot of personal data and managing very high customer volumes – especially in peak holiday seasons. We have always relied on a strong IT infrastructure to maintain efficiency and support the rapid growth of our business,” said a spokesperson for the travel agency.

“With the insight, expertise and support of Dimension Data, we have taken the next logical step by decoupling the organisation from the burden and limitations of managing and maintaining a data centre in Hong Kong. Adopting cloud services for the business means our IT environment is quicker, scalable, more cost-effective and not to mention inherently more secure than ever before,” the spokesperson added.

Taking a consultative approach, Dimension Data’s consulting services team acted as a single point of contact for the client, delivering all of the project management and migration services. The actual integration was provided via the Dimension Data Global Delivery Centre.

Dimension Data’s MCP hosts critical applications that the travel firm used to run out of its Hong Kong data centre, such as the Active Directory Domain Controller, file servers and all flight ticket related applications.

The scope of the project included network services, infrastructure management, platform services and the handling of application workloads.

The project was rolled out in phases. Phase 1 involved the migration of the organisation’s online booking system and Active Directory. Phase 2 covered the migration of the call logging system, file servers and back office applications.

The travel agency has enjoyed immediate benefits, such as 20% savings on its previous IT costs but there have been other outcomes, such as an improvement in terms of speed and agility.

Cloud resources can be ready within one to two days compared to a traditional server procurement approach which used to take weeks.

Furthermore, the client will no longer need additional internal IT resources to manage any new infrastructure in future roll out.

Other benefits from using Dimension Data’s MCP include the elimination of hardware refresh cycles. There is also no need to buy additional backup licenses and hardware to back up new applications.

“We created a team of Dimension Data experts and leaders to demonstrate our comprehensive expertise. Our approach of learning and aligning to the client’s vision, as well as responding to the client’s business goals and outcomes, have contributed to the success of this project. Coupled with a robust MCP and a flexible commercial model, we were all set to fulfil the client’s expectations,” comments Steve Lam, managing director at Dimension Data Hong Kong.

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