Cosmos to invest in e-commerce platform

Cosmos Holidays is planning to plough savings from switching operating systems into its new e-commerce platform. The operator is forecasting technology savings of 40% per year for the next three years with the migration of its inventory platform to a new Linux-based system, provided by Micro Focus. The operator had been using a UNIX system…

Cosmos Holidays is planning to plough savings from switching operating systems into its new e-commerce platform.

The operator is forecasting technology savings of 40% per year for the next three years with the migration of its inventory platform to a new Linux-based system, provided by Micro Focus.

The operator had been using a UNIX system and was incurring massive hardware support costs until the migration earlier this year. 

In addition to the cost savings, the system is also up to 10 times faster when it comes to updating sales information and generating caches of holidays or travel elements for the operator’s various distribution channels.

It is anticipated the switch to the Linux system will see a return on investment within a year and savings are to be used to widen the distribution for its new e-commerce gateway.

Cosmos IT infrastructure manager Rainer Kern said: “The technology is now in place so we can move forward with expansion plans for distribution partners.”

The company has been developing an XML gateway to sit in front of the inventory system and draw flights, accommodation and prices from it to distribute to agents, online and through other distribution channels.

Kern said the next phase was to offer its inventory through agency desktop systems such as those provided by the Vertical Group, Comtec and Multicom.