Scandinavian Airlines modernize Business Intelligence capabilities while lowering costs by re-using existing applications.
“By re-using our existing data warehousing applications in a Windows environment we delivered the new system much faster than if we had attempted a re-write. At the same time we were able to provide a better development environment for our programmers and enable our business analysts to exploit contemporary Business Intelligence tools to make more informed decisions based on up to date data.”
Per Petterson
System Manager, Enterprise Data Warehouse
SAS
Aviation
Sweden
Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) is the largest airline in Scandinavia. It flies to 150 destinations, employs 32,000 staff, and carries 40 million passengers annually.
SAS need to provide better business intelligence reporting and improved ad hoc analysis capabilities by providing real time data access while reducing costs.
Business Intelligence (BI) is vital to competing within the airline industry. However, at SAS, the mainframe data warehouse had become expensive to run and maintain and it was becoming difficult to deliver the BI in a timely manner.
The BI data warehouse was hosted on the same mainframe as other critical business processes, so applications supporting BI were treated as a lower priority. This meant the BI batch processes could take as long as six hours to complete, severely impacting the timely delivery of BI reports to business analysts.
SAS realized it had to dramatically modernize its BI capabilities to deliver a near real time scenario for reporting and analysis. SAS needed a data warehouse with desktop tooling that did not have to compete for mainframe resources and which analysts could use to quickly customize reports, rather than SAS having to rely on an expensive external vendor.
SAS initially looked to write new applications to run on a Windows Server utilizing Microsoft SQL Server™ but cost implications, time to market, and risk involved meant this was simply not viable. This is when SAS turned to Micro Focus.
SQL Server was selected as the new data warehouse repository and Microsoft Active Directory® was utilized to implement appropriate security over the network.
MigrationWare undertook the actual project to move the mainframe applications to Windows including the conversion of VSAM data files and the migration of all the relevant mainframe DB2 data to SQL Server. In addition, MigrationWare provided technology to ease the application migration by emulating the behaviour of standard DB2 utilities against SQL Server.
Batch processes that had previously taken six hours to complete on the mainframe are now completing in just two hours. This provides analysts with significantly earlier access to data required to make critical business decisions. In addition, the new ad-hoc reporting environment means SAS business analysts can quickly design their own queries and reports to respond to competitor action and market trends.
This improved flexibility and agility has already enabled SAS to improve its relationships with its customers and increase per-customer revenues.
SAS has been able to minimize the impact of flight delays and cancellations for its customers as a result of more detailed analysis of Internet reservations, check-ins, and call center interactions
The initial project was completed much faster than would have been possible using a re-write approach but more importantly the new Windows based development environment and the powerful tools around SQL server are enabling the IT team to deliver on new requirements much faster than was ever possible using mainframe-based tools.
The migration to Windows has resulted in a 50% reduction in annual costs associated with the data warehouse and applications used for BI.
Having the data warehouse implemented on Windows within SQL Server while utilizing proven business logic to update and process the data means SAS has the best of both worlds. This move has opened up many options to improve accessibility, relevance, and usefulness of the data for analysts, management, internal users and going forward, SAS’s partners and customers.