Bluestoneå® Software, Inc., a leader in business-to-Web and wireless technologies, today announced that Sabre, the leading provider of technology and marketing services for the travel industry, has selected Bluestone`s Total-e-BusinessTM platform as the foundation for its new American Airlines reservation agent application, known as the AACoRN (American Airlines Customer Relationship Network) program.
Sabre is moving American Airlines` legacy agent application from a DOS-based system to a Bluestone-powered e-business architecture to add an easier interface, new functionality and Web accessibility for its 5,000 American Airlines domestic reservation agents.
Bluestone`s victory in Sabre`s technology shoot-out further confirms the superiority of Bluestone`s Application Server technologies over competitive solutions. In Sabre`s head-to-head proof of concept comparison, Bluestone triumphed with a platform that demonstrated standout performance, product architecture and openness, compliance with Sun Microsystems` J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) specification, and product support.
“Sabre has extremely high standards for its AACoRN program, which we sought to maintain as we move to a more Web-friendly, next-generation platform,” said Kevin Smilie, director of the AACoRN program for Sabre. “Our new system must maintain or beat its current high availability and two-second response times. Bluestone not only demonstrated a superior Application Server platform that could meet our demanding requirements, but also offered a Java messaging implementation that is more open than others who rewrite in proprietary code. This was critical for Sabre because it will allow us more flexibility both now and in the future.”
AACoRN will replace a 10-year-old, DOS-based application that uses a text-based interface to deliver airline travel information to American Airlines reservation agents. The legacy system continues to deliver excellent performance in the form of two-second response times, as well as high application availability and transaction processing rates. Missing from the agents` desktops, however, is a graphical user interface that delivers information in a more readable, accessible format. Additionally, agents have no way to access supplemental multimedia content, such as computer-based training materials on the carrier`s intranet.
“While in Texas meeting with the Sabre team, we saw that AACoRN will be replacing a fast, mature system that American Airlines has been using to access Sabre systems for 10 years,” said Bob Bickel, executive technology officer and executive vice president of products for Bluestone Software. “Even though the legacy American Airlines system has reached the end of its lifecycle, we were hard pressed to improve on its fundamental attributes - excellent response times and high availability in an extreme transactioning environment. Our real challenge became how to introduce the new graphical interface without degrading that performance and reliability. With our best-of-breed Application Server, Bluestone`s platform plays a critical role in meeting that challenge.”
“In our technology evaluation, we were particularly impressed with Bluestone`s Application Server architecture,” added Smilie. “Bluestone`s Java Messaging Service (JMS) implementation is not proprietary, and the company`s implementation of Enterprise JavaBean 2.0 compliant message driven beans, which AACoRN needs, is unmatched. By being an open architecture, Bluestone`s platform lets us take advantage of improvements in the ORBs - message oriented middleware and directory services. Bluestone`s openness positions us to take better advantage of future advancements in the marketplace.”
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