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SCMP Reporter

Hutchison-Priceline appears ready to take its name-your-price Internet travel service to the next level - high-speed wireless.

Its chief technology officer, Parakh Dave, said the firm had an advanced information technology infrastructure in place that could support transactions over general packet radio service and future third-generation wireless networks.

He said there were no plans to do so at present but the company could swiftly tap existing corporate and IT synergies within the Hutchison Whampoa Group, to flexibly adopt wireless networks to deliver services.

'It's a business decision that we can execute because we use Oracle9i RAC [Real Application Clusters] which allows us to store key transactions and transparently scale any of our applications with no changes,' he said.

Oracle9i RAC, the multi-node extension to Oracle's database server software, runs on top of Hutchison-Priceline's primary hardware cluster - a group of independent Sun Microsystems servers.

They are operated as a single system.

The technology underpins Hutchison-Priceline's ability to expand its presence from Hong Kong to cover other Asian markets.

After its debut on April 16, Hutchison-Priceline quickly set up a version of its bilingual Chinese and English Internet travel Web site for Singapore - in May.

Taiwan and the mainland are expected to be the next markets on the list.

With the Oracle software's enterprise manager feature, Hutchison-Priceline IT administrators can now monitor all the company's databases from any remote location via their Internet-enabled personal digital assistant devices.

A senior IT administrator at Hutchison-Priceline, Jean Vorster, confirmed that there had been discussions of a wireless service-delivery model, but said that the company's priority at present was strengthening its existing business model.

He said Oracle9i RAC had also allowed the company to retain a maximum of two staffers to directly manage its numerous database programmes, which kept track of all consumer transactions and which also involved one of the travel industry's largest collection of suppliers - including 25 Asian and international airlines, and 8,000 hotel properties worldwide.

Although the Hong Kong-based operations of Hutchison-Priceline also rely on a call centre to support travellers who name the price they are willing to pay for airline tickets and hotel rooms, the Internet remains a vital part of its service-delivery model.

Mr Dave said this was the reason the choice of Oracle9i RAC filled the firm's need for a highly scalable and available IT infrastructure. It gave the company the ability to extend the reach of its services without sacrificing performance as it added new servers, or optimised applications to other mediums such as wireless networks.

Oracle's Hong Kong marketing director, Tony Banham, said: 'Hutchison-Priceline has already moved many of its applications, such as its customer e-mail system, to Oracle9i RAC and other features on Release 2 of our Oracle9i database.'

Recent figures from research firm International Data Corp show Oracle last year had about 40 per cent share of the SAR's US$33.3-million market for database software.

Mr Banham said 'a great majority' of the database technologies used at Hutchison-Whampoa member-companies were from Oracle, and that this standardisation helped Hutchison-Priceline speed the time to market for new and updated services.

According to Mr Dave, the company has been evaluating modules under the Oracle e-business software suite and was set to evaluate Oracle's newly released Collaboration Suite.

This software package comprises calendar, real-time conferencing capabilities, e-mail, file-system support, voice mail and work flow.

The suite is centralised and protected in a database with universal access through Microsoft Outlook, any Web browser, voice, wireless devices and fax.



Priceline goes wireless