sponsored by Amadeus
1
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
By Professor Jim Norton Freng,
2
Open for Business:
About the Author
Professor Jim Norton
His past roles include Chief Executive of the UK
Radiocommunications Agency and Chairman of Deutsche
Telekom Ltd. He is a respected adviser to governments, an
independent director and has served on several notable enquires
and commissions. He led the team that authored the report on ecommerce for the British Prime Minister and was a member of
the IPPR’s Commission on National Security in the 21st Century.
2
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
FREng Beng Cdir CITP Ceng Deng LLD FloD FRSA is immediate
Past President of the BCS – the Chartered Institute for IT, a
board member of the parliamentary office of Science and
Technology, Chief External Examiner for the Institute of Director’s
Certificate in Company Direction and a trustee of the Foundation
for information Policy Research.
3
Open for Business:
About Amadeus
Amadeus IT Group is a leading transaction processor and provider of
advanced technology solutions for the global travel and tourism industry.
First investor in R&D for the computer services and travel and
tourism sectors (€340m in 2011)
Currently using Open Source in key projects like Altéa Reservations,
Inventory, Departure Control System, among others.
We have sponsored this new white paper that urges the travel
industry to embrace the benefits of open source software
(OSS).
3
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
Committed both to Open Source and to thought leadership.
4
Open for Business:
What is Open Source Software?
4
1.Open
2.Available
3.Unrestricted
The standard must not
withhold any detail
necessary for the exchange
and use of information.
The standard must be freely
and publicly available under
royalty free terms at a
reasonable cost.
All patents essential to
implementation of the standard
must be licensed under royalty
free terms for unrestricted use.
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
In computing, open systems refers to systems built using OSS standards.
They offer a good level of portability and independence from the hardware
platforms on which they operate. The three characteristics of OSS are
openness, availability, and no restrictions.
5
Open for Business:
From closed to open systems
The concept of open systems started around the late 1960s, where the first steps
were taken to link different computer systems together across communications
networks. Following this, attention turned to the attached computer systems. Most
practical implementations lie somewhere on the spectrum between open and closed
systems.
1. From virtualisation to cloud computing
2. Open systems success
Almost all of the successful “Web” businesses launched in the last ten years have
drawn on this base of Virtualised open systems, familiar names such as Google,
Amazon, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter all operate in this way.
5
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
"Virtualisation" means a single mainframe computer can run separate instances of
the same operating system at the same time; the creation of "Cloud Computing" from
virtualisation came through the development of "orchestration", allowing many virtual
machines to be managed across a range of physical hardware.
6
Open for Business:
Cloud computing
The combination of virtualised open systems plus sophisticated orchestration leads to
the concept of purchasing computing capability as a utility: cloud computing.
1. Infrastructure
Basic virtual machines,
virtualised storage and network
access are made available to
users.
4. Business Process
Complete suite of applications to
perform a major business
function.
2. Platform
3. Software
Responsibility for the application
software is transferred to the
cloud service provider
6
5. Growth of the cloud
Cloud Computing is the fastest
growing service type in the
outsourcing market (+48%
growth last year, with total
spending of $5bn).
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
This adds a pre-configured
operating system and
middleware.
7
Open for Business:
How does Amadeus use open systems?
Altéa Customer Management System
At the operating system level, Amadeus is successfully transitioning from proprietary
systems to Linux to run its leading Altéa Customer Management System for airlines.
Amadeus leading online innovations
Leading innovations online, including e-Retail, Dynamic Website
Manager and Extreme Search have been built with extensive use
of open source components in ways that would not be possible
using legacy components.
Amadeus ARIA™ Templates – the framework upon which
Amadeus IT Group’s web solutions are based – has recently been
made open source, allowing third party developers to use it
without charge.
7
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
Amadeus open source framework
8
Open for Business:
Advantages for the business customer
Faster responses to changing
requirements
Access to greater
innovation
Multi-system support
Business organisations use a
wide variety of current legacy
systems all at different stages of
their lifecycle. The ability,
through open systems, to draw
on an extensive range of
standards and interfaces shared
and developed over 20 years
can be a key differentiator.
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
The combination of open source
software, open systems
interoperability and open
standards has created a
community of shared research
and development and a pooling
of creative ideas. Those that
show promise in testing and
development are implemented
and adopted more quickly
Customer engagement and involvement and
the influence of social networks place further
demands on immediacy of process. Access
to a range of cost effective development
tools, ability to scale rapidly and access to a
global knowledge base, all favour the use of
the "open" approach.
8
9
Open for Business:
Advantages for the provider
Access to skilled, motivated and innovative staff: A whole generation has
grown up with access to both the Internet and open source. They want to work freely with
these systems and tools.
Rapid adoption of new technology developments: New developments in
hardware, network based storage and software are a regular occurrence. It is important to
have timely access to these innovations which the open source community offers.
Drawing on the global community: The open source community now numbers
in the millions, and includes software architects, analysts, designers, programmers and key
universities. There are extensive opportunities for collaboration.
Avoidance of dependencies: Open Source limits restricted dependencies on
single sources and therefore limits the pricing power.
order to compare costs we have to consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) over the
lifetime of use of the software. Industry lore is that a TCO saving of around 20% is
achievable.
Full visibility and confidence on the source code: Extensive public review
and correction of the code can minimise the avenues for attack and offer a more rapid
response and defense against attacks.
9
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
Lower total cost of ownership: Open Source is generally free to obtain, but in
10
Open for Business:
Advantages for the traveller
Greater choice and depth of services
Open source both enables greater (as well as faster)
innovation and additionally makes it possible to deliver
services that would not be financially viable under the
economic model of proprietary software.
Functionality that would otherwise only be
viable to provide on a limited scale or at a
high price point – as it would be supported
either by proprietary software or by manual
activity – can be offered widely when
supported by open source software.
10
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
Democratisation of services
11
Open for Business:
Key findings
OSS is now applicable in the most demanding real-time processing environments.
Benefits for the business customer:
o Greater innovation
o Faster response to change
o Ability to support heterogeneous systems.
o Access to motivated and skilled development and support staff
o Reduced cost of ownership and independency from Monopily suppliers
Benefits for business providers: o Faster exploitation of new technology developments
o Higher visibility and trust in the source code
o Greater choice and depth of services
o Democratisation of services
The transition from closed to open systems represents a major integrity and fitness. Where
key functions can move between countries or continents on demand, new approaches and
working relationships are required.
OSS and cloud computing will have a great impact in computing and informatics
11
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
Benefits for travellers:
12
Open for Business:
For your information
Find out more about Open Source Systems (OSS)
on our corporate Blog, where you'll find a series of posts from different
authors on this topic.
Click on each icon to access the links
12
© 2012 Amadeus IT Group SA
You can also follow Amadeus on: