Mobil Travel Guide uses IBM e-business on demand to help travelers get going

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Mobil wanted to offer travelers a realtime, online version of its popular Mobil Travel Guide. Mobil turned to IBM and e-business on demand for a solution that kept upfront capital costs low, while providing them with a flexible, scalable infrastructure that could grow with their web site.

Mobil wanted to offer travelers a realtime, online version of its popular Mobil Travel Guide -- but providing five-star service on the web came with a large price tag. Mobil turned to IBM and e-business on demand for a solution that kept upfront capital costs low, while providing them with a flexible, scalable infrastructure that could grow with their Web site.

Business need

Mobil Travel Guide, a well-known name in the travel industry, wanted to leverage its brand recognition by providing a highly responsive, realtime online service for leisure travellers that includes customised travel planning, an around-the-clock customer service centre and a variety of privileges and rewards at a linked network of hotels and restaurants.

Key challenges

Mobil's existing online solution offered only a limited amount of static Web content. Moreover, it ran on just four servers, which were unable to process the site's considerable traffic, resulting in downtime for customers. Mobil wanted a more robust solution that would provide realtime services such as route planning and fast access to the company's vast travel information database. The solution also had to be flexible and resilient enough to handle seasonal usage fluctuations, including anticipated spikes during the summertime and over major holidays.

Mobil Travel Guide's internal goals also created a challenge for any solution. The site was expected to grow rapidly, but the company did not want to invest in an infrastructure capable of supporting its vision for the Web site.

SolutionIBM On Demand Business

Instead of using standalone Web, application and database servers, Mobil Travel Guide will run its web operations entirely on Linux-based virtual servers, hosted and managed by IBM. And because IBM e-business on demand delivers infrastructure capacity as a utility, Mobil Travel Guide pays only for the processing, storage and networking capacity it needs and can scale its virtual infrastructure up to meet demand spikes.

By avoiding up-front capital investment without sacrificing scalability, reliability or flexibility, Mobil Travel Guide is positioned for success. The company can optimise its spending by scaling its infrastructure dynamically to meet demands and channeling resources toward generating new business and revenue. "Otherwise, we would have to buy enough infrastructure to handle the biggest day we could imagine, but typically it would sit unused. Now, we can take advantage of any market sweet spot we find, because we can scale with minimal lead time and capital dollars," explains Paul Mercurio, chief information officer for Mobil Travel Guide.

What's more, this capability moves portions of the web-serving workload from Mobil Travel Guide's site onto caching servers located at strategic network points -- so end users get faster responses even while Mobil Travel Guide lowers its per-transaction costs.

"Because our service level ramps up or down dynamically in response to peaks and valleys in demand, we pay only for the capacity we need at any given moment in time," says Mercurio. "When we experience a demand peak that we were not expecting, our IBM e-business on demand services solution can adjust our capacity on the fly, helping us maximize our responsiveness to our customers."

The on demand delivery has already benefited Mobil Travel Guide in an unexpected way. After initially setting a committed capacity level that was too high, the company was able to leverage the flexibility of its IBM solution to "right-size" its capacity by reducing its contracted capacity level.

By outsourcing the solution to IBM on demand, Mobil anticipates it will save about 35 percent in overall maintenance and software costs, while deploying a world-class e-business infrastructure solution that guarantees high availability, rapid scalability and easy management of usage fluctuations.

"Initially, we looked at traditional outsourcing solutions -- purchasing hardware and support upfront and investing in additional technology as we grow," says Mercurio. "Then IBM presented a unique approach: infrastructure on demand. We are operating on extraordinarily tight timelines," adds Mercurio. "And the IBM e-business hosting team has been extraordinarily responsive to our needs from the beginning."

In just a nine-month span, Mobil Travel Guide aims to launch a whole new business supported by a very complex underlying infrastructure. "IBM had a team of professionals onsite assessing our needs within three days of signing a contract with us, and the same people are now helping us with our migration, development and implementation. They have been with us at each step along the journey."

 Customer informationMobil Travel Guide

For the past 45 years, the Mobil Travel Guide has been providing information on destinations, route planning, resorts, accommodations, restaurant reviews and other travel-related subjects for people traveling in the United States and Canada. Print versions of the Mobil Travel Guides, which are created and updated annually at the company's Park Ridge, Illinois headquarters, are sold at most major booksellers and other publishing outlets.