Expedia Information System
Expedia.com is one of the most famous websites for travelers who want to book their flights, hotels, rent cars or order some other services independently and online. Therefore, Expedia continuously works towards providing an accessible and convenient website for its visitors. This objective goes in line with the company’s core values aimed at simplifying and improving the travel experience for its customers and partners. To maintain the productivity of Expedia.com website, the company’s main instrument of providing services and communicating with its clients, it has to ensure the efficient functionality of all necessary hardware and software tools. Although there are a variety of available technologies to run a website, Expedia is facing additional challenges related to a huge number of visitors, possible simultaneous orders, and a wide range of global distribution systems it has to cooperate with.
Server-Side Hardware Requirements
On average, Expedia.com generates more than 7.5 million page views each day from more than 1.5 unique visitors. This means about 47 million visitors and 235 million page views per month (“Expedia.com [Analysis]”, 2016). To support such volumes of traffic for this information system, the company has to use both web and file servers. Web servers are required for the appropriate running of web pages of the website and the proper display of information. File servers are required to store the information downloaded into the system, although due to the constant changes of information, their storage capacities should not be very high. Expedia operates 21 servers (with a monthly cost of USD 12,600), which are located near the company’s Washington offices and in its own Arizona data center, in total going through 635.106 GB per day (“Expedia.com [Analysis]”, 2016). Neustar, a famous company that provides hosting services to e-commerce companies, also hosts Expedia (“Expedia Case Study”, 2013). 21 servers ensure the necessary space to support the website during a high season. However, sometimes it has a slow response in the evening time, the fact of which demonstrates there is still room for improvement.
Server-Side Software Requirements
In view of the fact that Expedia.com was founded in 1996 by a division of Microsoft, it is natural to assume that the company uses Windows Server operating system (either 2008 or 2012 version) and Microsoft SQL servers to run its servers. To display the information in browsers, Expedia.com uses web applications, which can be easily accessed by website’s final users. To communicate with the global distribution systems and the facilities the services of which are available on the website, Expedia.com has to use some types of property management systems. Moreover, there are several additional applications used by the company to connect with its partners. For example, the Expedia Quick Connect is an online reservation interface, which helps connect the website with property management systems (“Expedia & Booking.com Reservation Systems”, 2016). The main objective of the software application used by Expedia.com is the enhancement of the convenience of the website’s interface for its final users.
Client-Side Hardware Requirements
The customer base of Expedia.com consists mainly …
