Japan Airlines selects IBM's System mainframe and z/TPF software

Airline Industry Information, April 15, 2008

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2008 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

IBM System mainframe and IBM z/Transaction Processing Facility Enterprise Edition (z/TPF) V1.1 software from computer company IBM Japan has been selected to upgrade the worldwide reservation and ticketing systems of Japan Airlines International Co Ltd.

According to IBM, Transaction Processing Facility (TPF) is an operating system for its System z mainframe family which specialises in large-volume transactions processing and is widely used in the airline and financial industries. IBM said phased implementation of the system, which is its most up to date operating system, will start this year.

Japan Airlines will reportedly maximise the strong points of z/TPF, while maintaining the availability of IBM System z mainframes, updating its systems to make them more flexible. Workload License Charge (WLC), a new charging system for z/TPF, will be used to optimise system costs, charging fees for actual processing performance rather than processors used, helping to reduce the total cost of ownership per transaction for the airline.

The airline needed a system to help it improve its competitiveness and boost airline industry profitability, with the reservation and ticketing systems offering adequate scalability of processing capability to enable it to respond to future business developments and provide continuous service.

((Comments on this story may be sent to aii.feedback@m2.com))