1. A Scalable Content Platform
for TUI Travel
Matthew Skelton, CEng
Principal Consultant, Priocept
matthew.skelton@priocept.com
http://priocept.com/
@Priocept
#iw_expo #Priocept
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2. 1. Priocept
2. TUI Travel
3. Situation in 2008
4. What was the business problem?
5. Proposed solution
6. How did we design and build the system?
7. Why are these technologies so great?
8. How did we make the system scalable?
9. How do I get value from a Content Platform?
10. Recap
11. Questions
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3. We build systems that underpin online business
 Project management
 Technical consulting
 Software development
 E-Commerce, WCM, SOA, Mobile
 Analysis, Build, Integration, Support
 Technology and vendor independent
 Engineers at heart, with business in mind
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4.  World’s leading travel leisure company
 180 countries & 30 million customers
 FTSE 100
 Revenue (2010): £13bn
 Brands:
– Thomson
– LateRooms
– FirstChoice
– 200+
 Hotels, resorts, aircraft, etc.
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5. Situation in 2008
 TUI expansion and acquisitions
– 200+ websites Content
Sources 1 2 3 4 5
 Specialist content suppliers
– LonelyPlanet
– GIATA
– Weather Underground
– Cheqqer
– GeoNames
– TUI own brands
– ...
Websites A B C D
 Source, manipulate, package,
deliver
 Movies, photos, text, user
reviews, geo-data, weather
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6. What was the business problem?
 Complexity, effort and cost per market
– Build/Integration
– Storage
– Operation
 Same content bought repeatedly
 Proliferation: APIs, content, effort
 Re-inventing the wheel
 Needed:
– Group content deals
– Reduce time-to-market
– Avoid repeated integration activities
– Many markets, one solution
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7. Proposed Solution
 Services-based content hub
Content
 High-performance, scalable Sources 1 2 3 4 5
 Master Data (MDM) integration
 Intelligent caching and statistics
CP
 Access control
 Multi-lingual, multi-media
 Content manipulation and Websites A B C D
packaging
 “Digital concierge”
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8. How did we build the system?
 Solution NOT off-the-shelf:
– Web Content Management (WCM)
– Digital Asset Management (DAM)
– Product Information Management (PIM)
– SharePoint Business Data Catalogue
 Java Content Repository (JCR)
– Day CRX, Apache Jackrabbit
 Prototype (1 month)
 Rigorous technology selection
 Java 6, Spring, MySQL 5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
VMware, Squid, CXF, Jackrabbit
 QA environments, service manual, ITIL, working
closely with Operations, product roadmap, user docs
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9. Why are these technologies so great?
 JCR / Jackrabbit + MySQL
– Data store: querying, access control,
versioning, replication & clustering
 Java + Spring + CXF + Squid
– Domain-specific logic, API versioning
– Caching of local and remote content
 Hugely simplified content provision
– Single integration point for all markets
– Server-side mashups and logic: galleries,
resizing, watermarking, content “fallback”
 Automated/scheduled content loading
– Keeps content fresh & relevant
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10. How did we make the system scalable?
 Plan for 200+ websites connecting
– ~1TB content
– ~200k hotels, ~70k locations
 Clustering, load balancing
 “Virtual appliance”
 Local vs. remote content
 Squid cache
– “Cache everything” (apart from streaming or interactive)
 Remote slaves
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11. Getting value from a Content Platform
 Aggregation, entity links, search,
retrieval, server mashups, ...
 Multi-market or multi-site group-wide
content
 Subscription, pay-per-use, etc.
 Monetization of media platform:
– Guardian Open Platform
– NY Times
 User-generated content (UGC)
 Mobile, HTML5, Thrift, JCR 2.0, Solr
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12. 1. Priocept
2. TUI Travel
3. Situation in 2008
4. What was the business problem?
– Repeated, complex integrations costing time and money
5. Proposed solution
– Services-based content hub with intelligent processing and caching
6. How did we design and build the system?
– Prototypes, JCR/Jackrabbit, performance measurement, Dev + Ops
7. Why are these technologies so great?
– Core features built in, strong roadmaps, interoperable
8. How did we make the system scalable?
– Squid cache, clustering, VMware virtualisation, appliance model
9. How do I get value from a Content Platform?
– Repurpose content, server-side mashups, simple API, subscriptions, UGC
10. Recap
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13. Thank you for attending
matthew.skelton@priocept.com
http://priocept.com/
@Priocept
#iw_expo #Priocept
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