TUI Travel, formed from the merger of
Thomson Holidays and First Choice Holidays, is set to save 20% on
datacentre costs in the next three years throughserverandstorage virtualisation.
The company is to reduce the 270 servers across four datacentres
used by Thomson and First Choice by almost 90% using virtualisation
software from VMware.
The number of servers will be cut to just 30 by the end of 2008,
reducing maintenance and power costs.
Keith Newman, IT director for TUI UK, said the servers would be
located in Hanover, Germany, where Thomson has long held twin
datacentres as part of its disaster recovery plan.
"We have completed 20% of the consolidation process since the
merger in September, but we are progressing rapidly now that the
change freeze is over," he said.
Newman said the company was taking the opportunity of the server
consolidation exercise to standardise on the hardware, operating
system and storage devices for the common storage infrastructure to
be used by the Thomson and First Choice brands operated by TUI
Travel.
Both brands will also use a common web infrastructure although
each will continue to concentrate on different types of holidays,
with First Choice aimed at families and Thompson at couples. First
Choice is set to launch a new website by mid-2008.
"My focus at the moment is to bring the two companies on to
common systems and applications," said Newman. "I am looking at IT
as enabler to bring the two companies processes together and save
cost through resultant synergies rather than looking to cut IT cost
directly."
Newman said TUI Travel was switching to common applications
across the two brands with some hybrid systems, but about 90% were
those formerly used by Thompson because the company had already
done a lot of work to move to a more flexible business model to
combine package and component selling.
"Off the back of a detailed review, and considering that the
future direction of the business is very much a balance between
package and component, the Thompson application set was the most
appropriate one to go for," Newman said.
In terms of the back-office systems, TUI Travel has standardised
on financial and procurement software from Oracle, with human
resources and payroll still under review.
Newman also plans to standardise on Thomson's infrastructure
support and application development outsourcing agreements with
Wipro and Sonata in India.