Travelport extended a "multi-million dollar" system architecture and software agreement with IBM through the end of 2014.
The amendment to the companies' 2002 agreement calls for IBM to provide upgrades to system architecture and software infrastructure at Travelport's Atlanta data center, access to IBM's zTPF (z/Transaction Processing Facility) i.e. mainframe software platform, and migration and various other services.
Travelport states the relationship builds on the 2009-completed hardware upgrade and consolidation at its Atlanta data center, which houses both its Galileo/Apollo and Worldspan global distribution systems, as well as reservation systems for United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
The efficiency of TPF-based mainframes has long been debated inside and outside the travel industry, with supporters pointing to its reliability and transaction-processing acumen, and critics decrying its high costs and lack of flexibility, among other flaws. All of the GDSs, including Travelport, have moved some of their systems off TPF.
In its announcement about the agreement extension, which was signed March 31, Travelport states TPF "is unbeatable at the task it specializes in -- processing highly input/output-intensive transactions with extemely low latency and outstanding reliability. zTPF, the more modern version, allows users to modernize their applications by exploiting SOA and Web services."
Travelport states its systems process up to 1.6 billion messages per day and its investment in IBM software will enable Travelport to double the information it processes for its global clients.
Travelport states the agreement calls for it to use IBM's zTPF as well as other IBM software, including WebSphere, Rational and Tivoli, creating an SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) platform which enables developers to run applications on the middleware that best fits their programming needs.
An example of the mix and match SOA approach would be user interface functions written to WebSphere and travel reservation records applications working off zTPF, Travelport states.
Ongoing technology investments, as evidenced by the extension of the IBM agreement, will enable Travelport "to facilitate broader travel and travel-related content search, aggregation and integration from multiple sources in addition to the content traditionally stored within the GDS," Travelport states.
Not everyone, of course, is as bullish on whether Travelport can meet its objectives with IBM and zTPF.
Richard Eastman of the Eastman Group argues that Travelport "has fallen far far behind both Sabre and Amadeus in planning for and architecting a new platform capable of responding to contemporary e-commerce technology needs."
Eastman argues that Travelport would be hard-pressed to accomplish its aims using zTPF, a transaction-processing tool, as "both distribution and hosting have become dependent on relationally based knowledge-processing systems."
In its defense, Travelport, too, acknowledges that zTPF is primarily a transaction-processing tool, but Travelport says it is supplementing zTPF with other packages in IBM's software portfolio.
A travel industry tech analyst, who declined to be identified, says IBM likely squeezed Travelport in this deal.
"IBM had Travelport where it hurts," the analyst claims. "They couldn't stay on TPF (legacy) because IBM discontinued support and they didn't have the time, money and foresight to get off of TPF, so this was the only choice."
"Big iron [mainframes] and zTPF cost lots," the analyst adds, noting that TPF licenses typically cost $40 million to $50 million annually.
However, the analyst acknowledges that zTPF offers some improvements over TPF.
For example, with zTPF, the analyst says, companies do not need to operate a seperate external system to manage TCP-IP communications.