Travelport modernizing its application infrastructure with IBM

One sales person at IBM is no doubt having a very good week. The company just announced the inking of a modernization deal with Travelport, a company that processes travel transactions for more than 60,000 travel agencies worldwide.

Through this multi-million-dollar agreement, Travelport hopes to double its transactional processing capabilities. The deal includes upgrading to the IBM z/Transactional Processing Facility (zTPF), as well as WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli and a boatload of IBM hardware.

The two companies already had a working relationship before this storage and middleware expansion. Last year, Travelport finished upgrading the underlying infrastructure of its global distribution system with IBM. Through this project, the company consolidated all of its data center operations into Atlanta, Georgia. Travelport must have been pleased with the results.

This is a pretty big deal for IBM. Travelport handles travel transactions that involve any of 420 airlines, 88,000 hotel properties, 25 rental car companies and a host of other entities across the travel industry. Representatives say Travelport’s system processes up to 1.6 billion messages a day for transactions like airline and hotel bookings.