Red Hat Delivers Unmatched Performance at a Fraction of Previous Costs for Sabre Holdings, Travelocity

World leader in travel services utilizes Red Hat Enterprise Linux to maintain the IT architecture for its high-performance environment, requiring extremely high uptime for tens of thousands of transactions per second, 24x7, 365 days per year

RALEIGH, N.C. -

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Sabre Holdings, a world leader in travel marketing and distribution and parent company to Travelocity, Sabre Travel Network and Sabre Airline Solutions, relies on Red Hat solutions for increased performance, system reliability and scalability for its mission-critical open systems. Compared to proprietary Unix/RISC solutions during benchmarking, Sabre's testing has proven that Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel performs three times faster and at a fraction of the cost.

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Sabre Holdings turned to open source solutions to replace its former proprietary technology in order to improve the stability, performance and cost-effectiveness of its IT infrastructure and to ensure reliability for its customers. The company evaluated the leading Linux offerings on the market, and ultimately chose Red Hat for its established market leadership and renowned support offerings. With Red Hat, Sabre also discovered the power of the developer community that could provide reliable, consistent updates and fixes that could be incorporated in realtime.

"While operating the largest travel distribution service in the world, we develop solutions that must withstand what is perhaps the highest sustainable volumes anywhere, peaking at 32,000 transactions per second, available 24x7, with five-nines uptime. It's always a peak business hour somewhere in the world," said Robert Wiseman, chief technology officer at Sabre Holdings. "Fewer other systems anywhere require more rigor, but with Red Hat we are able to build stronger and smarter systems with our global customers in mind."

"Sabre Holdings selected Red Hat as the IT solution that would allow us to run all our businesses most effectively. Our Travelocity customers use our services for the content, speed, price and presentation, not for the operating system our business runs on," said Josh Hartmann, chief technology officer at Travelocity. "Red Hat provides a proficient and effervescent experience for our customers, who don't even realize that Red Hat is there. And that's the way it should be."

With millions of online customers generating tens of thousands of transactions per second, Sabre uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 on thousands of HP x86 servers and continues to expand its use of Red Hat solutions today. Two years ago, Sabre acquired lastminute.com, a leader in European online travel and today, Sabre is in the process of migrating all of lastminute.com's servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled Sabre to standardize its IT architecture, consisting of thousands of systems worldwide, across all three of its companies' IT infrastructures. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux is our corporate standard - all new systems are required to deploy on Red Hat Enterprise Linux," said Wiseman. "Compared to proprietary Unix/RISC solutions, our testing has shown that Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel performs three times faster at a fraction of the cost."

Since migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Sabre has benefited from system reliability, lower costs, increased performance and scalability. Sabre has long been known for innovating. InformationWeek named the Sabre central reservation system - the first of its kind ever built at the time - as one of the top 10 greatest software ever written. Sabre's technologists also think like business people to solve real business problems, from inventing automated reservations and yield management systems, to inventing new industries such as online travel, online business travel booking and others used widely today in the travel industry and beyond. Today, Sabre is streamlining airport check-in systems, developing new ways for hotels to connect with customers and forging new revenue streams for online booking.

"Travel is the world's largest industry, touching the jobs of as many as one in 10 people around the world. We rely on Red Hat for our mission-critical open systems. Standardizing our operating system on Red Hat Enterprise Linux has allowed us to focus on our core business competencies," said Wiseman, "We value Red Hat as a long-term partner in our development of Sabre Holdings' corporate IT goals because of the leadership role Red Hat plays in the open source community."

As Sabre Holdings continues to evolve its IT architecture, it will look closely at incorporating additional Red Hat solutions and is assessing Red Hat's integrated virtualization technology.

To read the full Sabre Holdings case study, visit www.customers.press.redhat.com. For more news about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.

 

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 50 satellite offices spanning the globe. CIOs have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for four consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

 

 

About Sabre Holdings Corporation

Sabre Holdings connects people with the world's greatest travel possibilities by retailing travel products and providing distribution and technology solutions for the travel industry. Sabre Holdings supports travelers, travel agents, corporations, government agencies and travel suppliers through its companies: Travelocity, Sabre Travel Network and Sabre Airline Solutions. Headquartered in Southlake, Texas, the company has approximately 9,000 employees in 59 countries and is owned by private equity firms Silver Lake Partners and TPG. More information is available at http://www.sabre-holdings.com.

 

 

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov, including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

 

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  • About Red Hat
  • Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.



  • Forward-Looking Statements
  • Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.