IBS Software Services enters into an agreement to form a business alliance with Cendant Travel Distribution Services, a world leader in travel services, for further development and global promotion of iRes, its new-generation Passenger Services System.
During the course of the relationship, IBS will have primary responsibility for product development and support, i.e., developing the iRes application suite and providing software maintenance and support services to iRes customers, while Cendant will have primary responsibility for product management, sales and marketing – i.e. for managing the world wide rollout and promotion of iRes, and providing iRes hosting services in an ASP (Application Service Provider) environment.
In announcing the agreement, Mr. V. K. Mathews, Chairman and Managing Director of IBS, said the alliance will be a realisation of the clear role IBS had visualised for a strategic partner that could fulfil its global vision for iRes: “Our vision is to make iRes the industry system of the future for passenger carriers. To do that, we needed a big player in the industry to promote iRes as the future PSS. We believe Cendant TDS fills this role exceptionally well. The domain know-how, technological competence and resource strength of IBS, coupled with the global presence, customer base and credibility of Cendant TDS, will make our alliance a success.”
Mr. Mathews pointed out that through this agreement, IBS will emerge on the world stage as a true PSS provider to the global airline industry – a field currently dominated only by a handful of large corporations. In his view iRes is “the single largest and most technologically challenging application to be built for the airline industry”.
Ms. Flo Lugli, Senior Vice President, Airline Solutions, for Cendant’s Travel Distribution Services division, praised the development of iRes, saying: “The global air travel industry has been badly in need of a new-generation system to support the rapidly changing business processes and evolving business models, and iRes meets this need superbly.” Ms. Lugli continued: “We are very pleased to partner with IBS on this exciting new technology. With more than 500 airline relationships across TDS and a large portfolio of our own industry-leading products and services, Cendant TDS is firmly committed to providing best-in-class solutions to the air travel industry – and iRes is clearly a world-class product. iRes supplements and complements our existing products and services, and will be one of our major, differentiating offerings to the industry”.
According to Mr. Mathews, the functional coverage and packaging provided by iRes serves the demanding, real-time needs of all passenger airlines, from low cost carriers to full-service carriers – and its technology and application architecture addresses both functional and non-functional requirements (e.g. performance, uptime and availability). The system is scalable and can be customized to suit the needs of an individual airline. It can be operated on standard Unix boxes (Sun/IBM) and does not require proprietary hardware or software. Its multi-hosting capabilities make it an attractive option for hosting service providers.
The press conference at which the alliance was announced was also attended by Mr. Kevin Haskins, Director Hosting Services (Cendant), Mr. Peter Krebs, Chief Operating Officer IBS Americas, Mr. Basil Mathew, General Manager Delivery Services (IBS), Mr. Suresh Verghese, Vice President Global Business Services (IBS) and other senior officials from IBS.