NH Hoteles Selects Red Hat Solutions for Its Web Portal

FAST FACTS

Industry: Tourism and hospitality

Geography: Spain

Challenge: Provide greater performance and stability for the company’s web platform with the fundamental objective to increase online sales

Migration Path: Oracle Application Server to JBoss Enterprise Application Server running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v4, and JBoss Operation Network

Software: JBoss Enterprise Application Server 4.2 and Red Hat Enterprise ES Linux 4.0

Hardware: 3 + 2 servers, 2 for Application Server, 1 for JBoss ON, 2 servers for Oracle database on HP-UX.

Benefits: Improved performance, stability, and scalability of the platform, while also enhancing architecture control

“The continuous increase in online sales made through the web means the priority of the Corporate IT department must be to seek maximum availability and performance of the technology platform. Red Hat solutions have proven to exceed expectations for the the current and future needs of our platform.”
– Ricardo Mardomingo, IT Manager of NH Hoteles.

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BACKGROUND
NH Hoteles (www.nh-hotels.com) is a well-known European business hotel based in Spain that is listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange. The hotel chain includes 350 locations, totalling more than 50,000 rooms across 21 countries in Europe, America, and Africa.

CHALLENGE
The company’s web platform, which includes its corporate website, a hotel search engine, and its online booking system, is a fundamental element of the business that is necessary to enable online sales. In 2006, its portal received around 17 million visitors. In 2007, the number of site visitors increased to over 22 million.

NH Hoteles was experiencing problems related to the stability and performance of its web platform. As a result, in May 2007, it decided to issue an RFI (Request For Information) to explore possible solutions that could ease the issues related to its web platform. It established a series of criteria for its platform solution, including heightened performance, scalability, standardization, support, monitoring, and procedures.

SOLUTION
The NH Hoteles web portal project consisted of migrating its Oracle Portal infrastructure that supports the NH Hoteles web platform to a 100 percent open source environment. After assessing various options that included the use of other proprietary application servers, NH Hoteles selected the solution proposed by Oxxigeno Networks S.L., a Red Hat Advanced Business Partner, based on JBoss Application Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. NH Hoteles worked with Oxxigeno Networks S.L., a Red Hat Advanced Business Partner, to complete the project, which spans the operating system, application server, web servers, and applications, as well as the subsequent platform operation management. The project was completed in October 2007.

The support services related to the new solution are based on practices of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standard and cover support tasks, including performance guarantees, proper operation of the platform, comprehensive monitoring of all NH Hoteles web portal applications, system configuration management, production environment update management (application and software updates, etc.), development methodologies, and the production of each task on the platform.

BENEFITS
After implementing Red Hat solutions, NH Hoteles benefited from a reliable technology infrastructure that was fault-tolerant, robust, supported by open technology, and standards-based.

The implementation of Red Hat solutions was a success and has exceeded the objectives defined by NH Hoteles. The hotel chain experienced an impressive increase in system stability with improved platform availability that grew from an average 98 percent before migration, to 100 percent after migration, as measured via the availability of the NH Hoteles portal homepage. The 66 percent performance increase of the platform enabled the execution of a complete web-booking cycle, including cancellation, and resulted in minimized response times for users., improving the online image of NH Hoteles.

Due to the management capacity of the JBoss Application Server clusters through JBoss Operations Network, NH Hoteles has also experienced greater control of its current architecture. The solution has provided ease-of-use and scalability, and has led the company to consider the suitability of implementing additional Red Hat solutions throughout the rest of its information systems.