Joe McKendrick, ebizQ's SOA in Action Blogger, is a nationally published author and consultant
with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in
the technology industry. He is a contributing editor to a number of
national and international publications and Websites including
Database Trends & Applications, ZDNet, and Webservices.Org. He also
serves as analyst for Evans Data Corp., and is lead analyst for Evans'
Web services and enterprise development management issues surveys.
SOA in Action Blog
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« A New Chemistry Brews Between ERP and SOA | Main | Urgent: Time to Better Integrate SOA and Data Management » July 19, 2007SOA Helps Tally Up the Miles While SOA, rightly or wrongly, is primarily seen as a strategy for optimizing IT operations, it's always good to see where it directly impacts the business. Carr talks about how Aeroplan, originally the frequent-flier plan for Air Canada, was able to expand its reach to both consumers and business partners in supporting customer loyalty rewards programs. Aeroplan's mainframe-based systems were originally built around supporting frequent-flier miles, until Air Canada spun the company off two years ago. Aeroplan sells mileage credits to 60 partners, including credit card issuers, and last year, issued 69.7 billion mileage credits and redeemed 49.3 billion, which were applied to airline tickets, hotel rooms, and merchandise. Aeroplan's challenge was to expand its Its range of offerings beyond what was a limited number of flights on Air Canada routes. Enter Web services, which helped Aeroplan integrate with partners to expand its program beyond airline seats. Aeroplan sought to increase the percentage of miles redeemed for non-flight rewards to 25% a year, up from 11% in 2006 and eight percent in 2005. To meet this goal, Aeroplan wanted to still leverage the mainframe as a back-end transaction engine, but add service layers for interacting with business partners and consumers. Aeroplan employed XML Web servuces in conjunction with open-source technologies such as Linux, the Apache Web server and MySQL database. Carr observes that "before creating the ability to tap into the systems of its partners via Web services, Aeroplan provided a way for partners to tap into its own services that way." Aeroplan also was making some use of XML exchange data between its mainframe and other applications, such as the Website and an interactive voice response system. "Rather than rewrite those XML messages and disrupt the applications that already depended on Posted by joemckendrick in SOA | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry:
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