Saudi Arabian Airlines launches eBusiness centre using sophisticated IBM technology

The announcement is the first phase of a series of carefully planned implementations aimed at supporting the airlines e-business strategies and boosting its internal capabilities to leverage Internet technologies. Jointly, a technical Saudia team supported by IBM and Saudi Business Machines (SBM), its general marketing and services representative for the Kingdom, successfully completed this phase.

The eBusiness Centre is a key milestone in driving Saudi Arabian Airline's long-term corporate e-business strategy as directed by H.E. Dr. Khaled A. Ben-Bakr, Director General of Saudi Arabian Airlines, to improve corporate IT capabilities, reduce costs and improve services to Saudi Arabian Airlines customers.

"IBM and SBM are the ideal strategic partners in this large-scale project as they are able to meet our high-end technology requirements with the WebSphere e-business platform, as well as having the expertise and resources to implement such large-scale systems in our timescale," said Mr. Mowafaq M. Jelaidan, VP of Information Technology at Saudia Airlines. "IBM's WebSphere platform is open and is supported by a large number of third party vendors, which was crucial in our decision-making process. It provides us with new capabilities and opportunities to serve our customers, partners and employees in an integrated manner while leveraging our existing investments."

The decision to use IBM's software and middleware technology was a result of a research that started by Saudia Airlines two and a half years ago on finding the partner that could provide an open, portable and scalable solution that would best integrate with its existing enterprise IT environment.

Mr. Abdullah M. Alharbi, General Manager Systems Development at Saudi Arabian Airlines and the Chairman of the Steering Committee for the project indicated that in pursuing this project, Saudi Arabian Airlines had to address issues of acquiring technologies components, knowledge & competencies transfer, and more importantly adopting a proven process and methodology for operating the eBusiness Center. These issues are key pillars and pivotal for a successful implementation of such a large scale IT project. The joined partnership between Saudi Arabian Airlines, IBM and SBM ensured a timely, successful completion of the project while sticking to the boundaries of the original allocated budgets.

"Saudi Arabian Airlines has taken a unique approach in the way that it has decided to move forwards with its IT environment and that is the importance it has given to integration. Many organisations in the region are introducing similar technologies without giving much consideration to integration which in the long term can result in complications and unnecessary costs," said the head of IBM's Software Group in the Middle East, Bashar Kilani. "IBM's WebSphere technology allows Saudi Arabian Airlines to use its existing resources without creating isolated islands of hardware and software, and ensures full integration with its back end systems whenever the organisation brings forth new products and services."

Saudia Airlines' existing IBM mainframe environment is one of the largest in the Middle East where it runs more than 90 mission critical systems that have to be accessed from over 75 cities around the world. The airline also has a set of Web-enabled applications that are based on different transaction monitors and data base engines, including IBM's DB2 platform.

"One of the key benefits that IBM's WebSphere technology has offered Saudia Airlines is the unleashing of important information and functionalities on their mainframe platform. With this unique accessibility feature, users can take advantage of having a consolidated view and access point to mainframe-type applications and data from a single browser-based interface," said Mohamed Nour from SBM. "This feature significantly reduces the time needed by the user to perform a specific business process."

Saudi Arabian Airlines has set plans to expand into other specific IT projects, such as introducing an enhanced and consolidated customer portal, mobile business using SMS, WAP and wireless computing as well as enterprise Web content management.

"Our goal is to continuously improve the services we provide to our customers in this global market. The eBusiness centre will play a pivotal role in helping us bring world-class Internet-based services now and in the future," added Jelaidan.