Integration Platform

Integrate airline legacy mainframe host systems with new applications and with each other

Travel industry executives face many information technology (IT) strategy challenges, including:

Increasing demand from suppliers and customers for real-time access to your host
Managing complex host integration
Restriction of business processes by your legacy hosts
Reduced budgets and staffing levels while maintaining customer service levels

Integration Platform was designed specifically for the travel industry and allows disparate information technology (IT) systems, within a company and between companies, to work together seamlessly.

Overview

Integration Platform simplifies airline systems' integration by exposing data and business functionality on legacy systems such as XML Web Services.

Airlines, airline alliances, tour operators, travel agencies, online travel portals and other travel service providers use SITA Integration Platform as the basis for their integration strategies.

Integration Platform is an integral part of SITA’s Horizon portfolio, a suite of products that enable airlines to simplify their distribution.

Benefits

Integration Platform provides the following benefits.

Extends the use and the life of legacy systems
Reduces development costs and time to market
Reduces risks for the implementation of new business strategies
Reduces the cost of technology
Enables future B2B connectivity based on XML standards

Features

Integration Platform includes the following features.

The only TAI platform that interacts “out of the box” with the complete range of travel application protocols
Applications with instant access to legacy systems (reservations, departure control, GDSs, operations, cargo, frequent flyer databases, etc.), encapsulating their complexity and proprietary nature
Enables new applications in the areas of e-commerce, Internet, B2B, self-service, mobile, point of sale and agency desktop to be implemented on modern, open platforms
Can be used to interconnect hosts, eg: airline hosts in alliance networks
Out-of-the-box connectors for airline hosts (MATIP, IATA-HTH, X.25), and for GDS/CRSs (Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, Worldspan, SHARES, SITA RES)
Out-of-the-box interfaces for Web servers, application servers, mobile servers and desktop applications

How is Integration Platform used?

There are three types of integration scenarios, and you can use one or all of them.

By deploying the integration platform to expose legacy functionality through SOA Web Services, your enterprise can maximize the benefits of existing legacy infrastructure and advantages of open systems, while minimizing the effort to connect the two (Figure 1).

SITA Integration Platform, Figure 1

SITA Integration Platform also allows legacy applications to call out to SOA Web Services. This can extend the lifetime of existing legacy infrastructure by adding new functionality through Web Services (Figure 2).

SITA Integration Platform, Figure 2

SITA Integration Platform can facilitate the exchange of data between different mainframe systems. The platform bridges different network protocols (eg: X.25 to MATIP) and data formats (eg: different EDIFACT versions), (Figure 3).

SITA Integration Platform, Figure 3