The adoption of cloud computing in the tourism industry can guarantee economies of scale and innovation.
Tourism Ireland experiences these possibilities by moving its entire IT infrastructure to the cloud at a whopping five-year contract worth 850,000 Euro.
Tourism Ireland stands to gain a lot from this development: the company manages over a dozen websites that have presence in over 20 countries and provide tourist information for countless visitors that arrive in Ireland every year; and as the amount of information the company handles each year increases, Tourism Ireland makes the significant decision to reduce the cost of running its previous data center by moving its erstwhile in-house IT structure to a privately managed cloud. Subsequently, the company has, by far, succeeded in cutting its hosting and energy cost by fifty percent.
This strategic move guarantees both economies of scale and greater innovation for the company. Hosting its IT infrastructure in the cloud affords Tourism Ireland the unique opportunity of concentrating only on the internal activity of management and business expansion. Niall Powderly, head of IT Infrastructure of the cloud company hosting Tourism Ireland’s IT system, declared that, “For enterprise organizations like Tourism Ireland, the (new) infrastructure offers levels of efficiency and opportunities to innovate that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.” Therefore, Tourism Ireland operates optimally through the centralization of its IT systems that produces no negative impact on the company’s internal and external activities.
Tourism Ireland achieves efficiency by creating a common resource pool with a combination of network, servers, storage facility and customer-centered services, all hosted in the cloud. This action definitely helps the company to save on the cost of maintaining IT personnel and other contracted consultants that oversaw its previous in-house IT structure.
Niall Powderly finally gave this piece of advice: “Organizations that were reluctant to move IT off-premise are now looking at it because …networks are faster and more affordable. You can now move infrastructure to a data center at a very reasonable price and have no performance impact.”
Three significant merits of adopting cloud computing in tourism industry stand out from Niall’s statements above:
- Speed: Tourism business requires the use of many interconnected computers that are needed to pass important travel information to potential customers. Fast internet connection and computing operations are constantly required to guarantee optimal performance in this regard.
- Affordability: Cloud computing is affordable and helps tourism companies to cut back on recurrent expenses, especially in the area of maintaining in-house IT structure, which include the purchase of latest software, hardware and the payment of wages to IT personnel. And it is reasonable to move IT infrastructure to the cloud for better efficiency.
- No Performance Impact: There are no observable negative impacts on the IT performance during and after moving a company’s IT system to the cloud. In other words, the quality of services rendered by the company after its adoption of cloud computing would not be affected. Instead, cloud computing will enhance the quality of operations at the said tourism company.
Setting a significant example in this situation, Tourism Ireland’s action would likely motivate several other tourism companies to sign up for cloud computing with the hope of reducing their overhead expenses and positioning their business for innovation and unprecedented growth. Cloud computing will help companies in the tourism industry to devise the appropriate methods for managing their customers’ data, operational processes and business expansion in a way that cost efficiency and optimum performance can be guaranteed. It is not immediately clear how many European tourism industries will emulate Tourism Ireland’s efforts, but the trend is likely going to continue as many firms discover their potential gains if they adopt cloud computing strategies and technology.
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About the Guest Writer:
Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/
