Farelogix Cements Trend Towards Off Core Profiles With New Product Line.

At this year's NBTA in sunny San Diego (sadly I could not go this year so I am late in catching up with all the info out there), one of of the hot topics was the move by the GDS to shift Profiles out of the the central TPF core. Everyone is doing it. Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport all have versions either as demoware or in roll out.

Now comes the announcement that Farelogix has a new product FLX Files. From the Farelogix PR piece:

“We see momentum toward universal traveler profiles for two reasons,” said Jim Davidson, president and CEO, Farelogix. “First, decentralization is no longer practical for storing and managing multiple profiles. Maintaining profiles in multiple sources and locations creates too much expense and duplicity, and synchronization headaches. Second, the industry is moving toward independence, data ownership and choice. Nobody wants strings attached. As technology proliferates, opening up is essential so customers can pick and choose the components that work best for them. What we are providing is an extensible, easy-to-implement, open system that can be integrated with as many other systems as customers want. With FLX-Files users get more control and flexibility, while maintaining full ownership of their data.”

In my humble opinion this is not a new issue. In my day job I have seen several far-sighted companies take their Profiles OFF GDS core before. Indeed my team have even helped to make this happen. However because it was an anathema to the centralized data management concept of the GDS - it was both frowned on and actually very hard to execute. Last year Sabre allowed me a sneak peak at their new off-TPF based Profile system. One of the interesting topics to emerge during the discussion with the project team was that they say this as not just a single and solitary change but rather the underlying core technology (my words) unbundling of one of many of the central customer file management functions of the GDS. Sabre was unabashed in their enthusiasm for the move including moving the PNR away as well.

My sense is that we are seeing (finally after very many years) a radical restructuring of reservation type products not just by the GDS but also by the airline PSS vendors as well. SITA's new PSS has a customer centric vision rather than a PNR centric vision. CRM is driving much of this change.

In my view the whole concept of the unbundling of the GDS is a natural progression. When I started working in distribution in the early 1980s, the only electronic way to communicate was a cradle to grave approach by the then CRS companies. 100% of their services were provided by their own systems. Quickly the independent vendors ABS/ADS, TravelLink et al were snapped up by the GDS. Very few PNRs made it through the agency lifecycle being touched by anything else other than a human and perhaps a back office vendor's product.

Fast forward to today and in almost all major markets each PNR is touched by multiple external systems. This has shifted the focus of the reservations system to the front line. Front Office and Mid Office applications are used (and paid for) by the intermediaries. This has eroded the importance of the GDS to the user community. In the early 1990s I used to draw a diagram that showed the GDS moving away from the front and center of the Intermediary tool kit to a box on the higher content (read supply) source line. While in my mind it has taken way too long for this to happen - it has been a slow and steady progression to get there.

If one examines the features and functions of an OTA for example - one can see that the key GDS functions (supply access, file management, search etc etc) are performed better and with far greater flexibility by these players than by the GDS platform providers. The OTA functions are a superior superset. I wont dwell on the subject of why the OTA's still use the GDS - that is for another time.

Farelogix is one of the innovators in addressing the needs of the supply side and the distribution side and their evolution. They are however by no means the only player doing that. The long term trend to me is an inevitable migration away from the bundled one size fits all GDS centric model to a fragmented but more customizable set of relationships managed by different and more appropriate technologies and players. I will caution everyone - with this power comes responsibility. Are we ready to take that on yet? I think so - and so it would seem do quite a few other players.

The death of the unitary model has oft been predicted. Frankly I think its already here.

Cheers

Sabre Launches ProfilePlus.

As regular readers know - I am not a huge fan of the GDSs. But occasionally they do something right.

The new Sabre ProfilePlus product which will replace the old and now very tired STAARS product (actually does it still have 2 As in it?) it has used for so many moons.

All 3 GDSs are now working on the non-TPF hosted Profile system. I cannot comment on the others because I haven't seen the Amadeus and the TravelPort products. However I think it is definitely a product type whose time has come.

Prying open the GDS to allow access to the core functionality of the GDS without necessarily changing the underlying components, would have been heresy even a few years ago. Today with products like LUTE's Open Office Platform and Travelport's new workstation product, the unbundled model is indeed becoming a reality.

It should be remembered that the GDS sits on 3 basic platform legs.

Content and access to supply e.g. Airlines Inventory and pricing
Applications e.g. Shopping tools
Customer File Management e.g. PNRs and profiles

The unbundling of the GDS model has been something that has needed to happen for a very long time.

ProfilePlus represents a good way forward. It is huge. 1600 data elements. It is however still host based. The old flat file based profiles are replaced with significant capabilities and useful tools. It is based on web services model with a GUI as the front end and interfaces using both a command line or a Graphical front end. It is also 2 way although the initial release will be the traditional unidirectional tool. it is tightly coupled to MySabre but in the future will support external services such as Merlin in Germany.

Among the new capabilities are:

1. Templates that will make profile creation a lot easier
2. Filters that enable the display of only critical data a lot easier
3. A master (Oracle based) database for the management and manipulation of profiles
4. PNR interaction via a new *PI function
5. Profile migration tool which is essential
6. A future road map of many functions
7. Interaction with both local and remote applications

There are many elements that will be familiar - A.O.N - Always, Optional and Never move components.

In the discussion with the product folks today, they described how Sabre has a vision for recreating the PNR by "flattening" the structure. This is a pretty radical departure for a GDS.

Product roll out will occur in Q2 2009 with migration complete by the end of 2010. There are already about 25-30 users on the system in test.

Frankly the power will be more than 90% of what agents will generally need. But this wont be too complicated as the standard agent in the high street never need touch the power. However for a large corporate agency this has functions that have been asked for. It is however a whole new structure and functionality that will require extensive support services (that Sabre will initially provide at no additional charge). It is of the same magnitude of effort as the introduction of scripting.

There are still challenges. Prying open the GDS requires a philosophical and commercial model that Sabre doesn't seem to be too keen to support at this point. But with tools like this the technology is not going to be the problem.

Kudos to the team at Sabre who did the work. It looks very thorough. However one should spend a lot of time with the product before deciding on its deployment profile.

It would be very interesting to see how the other 2 systems, Amadeus' new environment and the G2 based solution from Travelport stack up against Sabre's now announced offering.


Cheers