Conference ucrow::desktop_acms

833.0. "ACMS, Oracle, and Perot Help Thrify Car Rental" by DELNI::HERSHEY () Fri Feb 28 1997 14:46

The article below appeared on "Livewire" on 24 February 1997.

Thrifty becomes first to offer car rental reservations via the Internet 
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         Using its existing VAX and Alpha systems and the DIGITAL 
   transaction processing monitor, ACMS, Thrifty Car Rental recently became 
   the first car rental company in the world to offer direct online 
   reservations capability via the Internet.
         Recognizing the capability of the Internet to expand to new markets 
   and improve customer service, Thrifty partnered with Perot Systems to 
   integrate its legacy ACMS car rental reservation system with the World 
   Wide Web.  
         Perot Systems had already developed the existing high-volume 
   reservation system utilizing a three-tier, distributed client/server 
   architecture.  The architecture consists of MicroVAX clients, a highly 
   available VAX cluster server, an ACMS transaction monitor, and an Oracle 
   Rdb database to store millions of records.  
         The system supports the Thrifty reservation call center as well as 
   a real time connection to the airline reservation systems.  Protecting 
   this investment while expanding the capability of the system was of prime 
   importance to Thrifty.
         Jim Lamb, Perot Systems project manager, says the Internet was a 
   logical extension to the Thrifty reservation system.  "The architecture 
   of the reservation system made it very straightforward to offer the 
   application services to an Internet client.  At the same time, ACMS 
   provided the features needed to prevent Internet access from adversely 
   impacting Thrifty's core business processes.  As a result, Thrifty was 
   able to quickly open a new channel for reservations without incurring 
   incremental data maintenance expenses, while at the same time maintaining 
   consistency with the call center and airline systems."
         Perot Systems used ACMS Desktop as the interface from the World 
   Wide Web to the existing Thrifty reservation system.  This gave Perot 
   the opportunity to integrate the Internet with minimal change required 
   to the existing car reservation system.
         Thrifty is confident its ACMS-based reservation system will scale 
   comfortably to handle the additional volume.
         "The need for Thrifty Car Rental to expand markets and take 
   advantage of new technology while protecting investments in existing 
   systems is an example of the challanges facing business today," said John
   Ferguson, ACMS product manager.  "The architecture and scalability of 
   an ACMS transaction processing system gave Thrify the ability to take 
   its current applications into the future quickly and easily." 
         Thrifty Car Rental is an international franchise network of more 
   than 1,100 locations in 50 countries around the world.  Thrifty serves 
   both the airport market and the local car rental market, and is one of 
   America's largest airport parking operators with more than 11,000 spaces 
   in 54 U.S. cities.
         Perot Systems is a leading information technology services and 
   business transformation company with an estimated 1996 revenue of US$600 
   million.  The company serves major clients in the financial services, 
   health care, utilities, telecommunications, and travel and leisure 
   industries in North America, Europe and Asia.  Privately owned, Perot 
   Systems has more than 4,300 employees worldwide.

         For additional information contact:
         Bob Slone, DIGITAL Marketing ([email protected]) 
         Karl R. Taylor, Perot Systems ([email protected])