Infotech Lead America: TUI Travel Accommodation & Destinations (A&D) has implemented Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers and Cisco Nexus switches to optimize its operations for improving the performance of main applications.
Cisco will support SAP HANA (High Performance Analytic Appliance) platform, SAP Business Intelligence applications (SAP Business Warehouse and SAP Business Objects Suite) and VMware virtualization software.
The Cisco-SAP-VMware combination enables TUI Travel Accommodation & Destinations to process and analyze large amounts of information in seconds, create innovative applications, and significantly speed up data transfer rates.
“We need the support of the best data center technology and network infrastructure to manage our online business with the maximum scalability, adaptability and security, supporting intensive 24×7 operations and software updates, while guaranteeing maximum availability and data transfer rates,” said Greg Garrison, chief technology officer of TUI Travel Accommodation & Destinations.
“Cisco UCS servers, based on standards and supported by a complete ecosystem of partners like VMware, EMC, Oracle and SAP, have met our expectations and constitute a complete platform for promoting our growth now and in the future,” Garrison added.
In its data center, TUI Travel A&D has incorporated the certified SAP HANA platform on high-availability mode Cisco UCS servers. Many SAP and Cisco customers are deploying HANA on UCS but TUI is the first public reference in EMEA (Europe, Middle-East, Africa) region.
Cisco UCS enables TUI Travel A&D to enjoy access to critical business information — without the delays of typical data warehouse environments — improving the performance of SAP HANA and main SAP Business Intelligence applications (SAP Business Warehouse and SAP Business Objects Suite).
“Now that we’re using SAP HANA on Cisco UCS, we have gone from analyzing millions of records in hours to the flexibility of analyzing hundreds of millions of records in seconds,” said Santiago Jose Reig, head of Business Intelligence B2B at TUI Travel Accommodation & Destinations.
TUI Travel A&D has selected Cisco to renew and consolidate its data center with a hardware platform focused on virtualization and the adoption of Cloud Computing environments, ready for the leap forward to 10 Gb Ethernet.
With a smaller physical footprint, TUI Travel A&D estimates that the company will save more than 150,000 euros per year in IT housing and administrative costs.
“SAP solutions combined with Cisco UCS provide confirmed value with a unified high-performance fabric, optimized memory capacity, reduced energy consumption, and low total cost of ownership. The project with TUI Travel A&D is the first SAP HANA reference on UCS in production in the EMEAR region and an unequivocal demonstration that Cisco UCS is becoming an ideal colleague for SAP HANA to increase the yield of data warehouse systems,” said Xavier Massa, partner organization manager at Cisco Spain.
