Confirm Project

Confirm Project

CONFIRM was a very ambitious IT project supposed to create a single computer reservations system/global distribution system used by airline, rental car, and hotel companies.

Contents

History

The system was pursued to develop in order to create synergies between AMR, Marriott, Hilton Hotels Corporation and Budget Rent-A-Car and fully integrate and unify the reservation systems of the companies involved.

In 1988 the four large corporations made contracts to complete the system by June 1992 project at a cost of $55 million. Unfortunately, the project turned out to be much more complex to finish than the partners had anticipated. They all had high hopes based that AMR would expand on the extremely successful SABRE computer reservation system that had helped American Airlines create a sustainable competitive advantage after the deregulation of the airline industry. In April 1992, just three months before the system was intended to go live, Confirm failed tests at Los Angeles-based Hilton. AMR also told its partners that it needed another 15 to 18 months to complete the system. The project was never completed. In the process more than 500 technical personnel worked on the project; when the partners disbanded the project in July 1992 they had spent three and a half years and $125 million on the project.

The technical complexity of this project was extreme. CONFIRM runs on two IBM 3090 mainframes. One houses the central reservations system, which runs under Transaction Processing Facility. The other mainframe houses a DB2 relational database in an MVA (an IBM mainframe operating system) environment. The database contains decision-support information such as customer histories and pricing data. The system required application-to-application bridging between the two mainframes (CPUs/IBM 3090) for some 60 applications. The main problem was to tie CONFIRM's transaction-processing facility-based central reservation system with its decision-support system. Hilton users found that the system's user interface, mainframe transaction processing and mainframe database did not adequately communicate with one another. Other problems included different programming languages and difficulties with recovering databases in event of crashes. These problems were not insurmountable, but they would delay the project for about two extra years.

In September 1992 AMR (American Airlines) sued Marriott, Hilton and Budget, alleging they caused CONFIRM's failure by withholding funds, making poor staffing assignment and withdrawing prematurely. The three partners countersued.

In January 1994 American Airlines reached out-of court settlements with all of its partners for undisclosed amounts.[1][2]

See also

Further reading

References


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Project management — is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end (usually time constrained, and often constrained by funding or deliverables) …   Wikipedia

  • Project Grudge — was a short lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but… …   Wikipedia

  • Project MATCH — began in 1989 and was sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The project was an 8 year, multi site, $27 million investigation that studied which types of alcoholics respond best to which forms of treatment.… …   Wikipedia

  • Project Azorian — Hughes Glomar Explorer Coordinates …   Wikipedia

  • Project Jennifer — Jennifer was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project to recover the sunken Soviet submarine K 129, one of the Soviet Union s strategic ballistic missile submarines, from the Pacific Ocean floor in the summer… …   Wikipedia

  • Project Pegasus — Infobox comics organization imagesize= 120 caption=Cover to The Project Pegasus Saga TPB publisher=Marvel Comics debut= Marvel Two in One #42 (August 1978) creators=Ralph Macchio type=Governmental research laboritory business= organisation=… …   Wikipedia

  • Panama Canal expansion project — The Third Set of Locks Project is a megaproject that will expand the Panama Canal. The expansion will be greater than at any time since the canal s construction. The Panama Canal Authority proposed the project after years of study. Panamanian… …   Wikipedia

  • Northumberland Development Project — Artist s impression of the Northumberland Development Project Full name TBA Former names White Hart Lane Location …   Wikipedia

  • MOSE Project — The MOSE Project (acronym for Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico in English, Experimental Electromechanical Module) is a project intended to protect the city of Venice, Italy. Is an integrated defence system consisting of rows of mobile gates… …   Wikipedia

  • Timeline of the Manhattan Project — The following is a timeline of the Manhattan Project, the effort by the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada to develop the first nuclear weapons for use during World War II. The following includes a number of events prior to the official… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”