BA aims to save £100m a year by moving customer service
online
British Airways is set to save £100m from its customer
transaction costs and was able to move its systems to a Linux
platform because of investment in Java technology.
The UK's leading airline completed a £30m business transformation
programme, Customer Enabled BA, in March. The programme was based
around online self-service and relied heavily on Java
technologies.
It will have paid for itself within six to nine months and is on
target to create £100m annual savings for BA overall, according to
Mike Croucher, head of IT delivery. Savings have been made from
internal efficiencies and reduced demand on call centres.
The Java development language has also allowed the airline to
easily move applications from a Sun/Solaris environment to
Intel/Linux.
Because of Java's platform independence, BA was able to move its
applications from Sun/Solaris systems on to Intel/Linux without
rewriting code or interrupting its punishing development cycle. The
airline used BEA's JRockit Java Virtual Machine product in the
transfer.
BA was an early investor in Java. In 1997, just two years after the
technology was announced, it began work on a system to allow BA
Executive Club members to access their accounts online, based on
Java and BEA Weblogic technology.
The airline has put its entire customer-facing functionality
online, allowing customers to book, upgrade and control account
information. Java has been a key component in giving the company
this ability, said Croucher.
Peter Roberts, BA technology manager, said, "From the start, with
some help, we have been able to build a well architectured
application."
He said Java's standardised environment allowed developers to
create reusable components for business operations, as well as
technical components. For example, a component that could validate
credit cards could be used in several applications.
"Before [Java], business components could prove very difficult to
achieve, but we have had some good successes at that now," Roberts
said.
The airline is also using these components to communicate with
other systems within BA and outside the company. This transition to
web services could, for example, allow a customer to hire a car
online without leaving the airline's website.
Sun still shines despite long-running spat >>
10 years of Java
May 1995 Java technology is officially
announced at Sun Microsystems' SunWorld user conference, as a
programming language for developers to write a program once and
have it run on multiple operating system platforms, a feature
termed "write once, run anywhere".
1996 Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.0 is
released. The first JavaOne developer conference takes place, and
JavaBeans, Servlets and other technologies are announced. Microsoft
licenses Java technology from Sun for five years.
1997 JavaBeans Development Kit is released, and
Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) technology is announced. Sun sues
Microsoft for breach of contract and copyright infringement.
1998 Visa launches the world's first smartcard
based on Java Card technology; Sun ships the Java 2 platform, with
an improved graphical user interface, and many additional packages.
A judge orders Microsoft to remove the Java logo from its
products.
1999 Jini technology is announced, to simplify
the connection and sharing of devices, such as printers and disk
drives, on a network. JavaServer Pages technology is unveiled, and
J2SE, J2EE and J2ME platforms announced. The J2EE platform is
shipped.
2000 Microsoft announces C# and .net Framework,
to compete directly against J2EE.
2001 J2EE Connector Architecture is announced.
Sun and Microsoft settle their 1997 lawsuit.
2002 J2EE 1.4 Beta is released. Sun files a
private antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, seeking immediate
injunction against Microsoft shipping Sun's JVM in Windows, or
distributing a standalone version of its own JVM.
2004 Sun releases Tiger (Java 5.0). Sun and
Microsoft settle all litigation and sign a technology-sharing
agreement.
May 2005 Java's 10th anniversary.