Paxport: Modern travel booking experiences with reliable, end-to-end services
About Paxport Group UK Ltd.
Paxport provides travel companies with end-to-end solutions for data caching, booking management, search, finance, and more. Paxport’s customers have access to everything from flight and hotel aggregation to merchandising and virtual card payment support - all within a centralized platform.
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About CTS
CTS works with organizations to modernize their technology stack, providing consultancy, implementation, billing and managed services across both Google Cloud and Google Workspace.
Paxport uses Google Cloud solutions and support from Managed Services Provider CTS to migrate its entire IT stack to improve system reliability and speed up development.
Google Cloud results
- Accelerates time to develop and test new environments from weeks to hours
- Eliminates weekly system outages and SLA issues with almost 100 percent uptime
- Standardizes business on scalable, extendable infrastructure that includes native data management solutions
Reduces total IT spend by 8 percent through managed services
As a provider of digital B2B solutions for the rapidly changing travel industry, Paxport has experienced significant growth by focusing on improving customer experiences. The company has helped travel service providers of all types and sizes access powerful tools and products that assist with travel research, booking, and other services that give travelers quick access to the modern digital services they have come to expect.
"We collect information about flights, accommodations, and other important travel data, clean it up and then make it available to our travel services customers," says Tom Pye, Head of IT Operations at Paxport. "Our product portfolio, including our PaxFaB flight and hotel aggregation tool, gives travel agents, airline carriers, and others what they need to provide exceptional customer experiences."
Back in 2016, Paxport was experiencing service failures, maintenance issues, and a lack of scalable deployment processes within its on-premises data centers. Rather than spending hundreds of thousands of pounds to revamp its data centers, the company migrated its infrastructure to Google Cloud with the help of dedicated Google partner CTS.
"We knew that Google Cloud was the right choice for us because it gives us a highly scalable and reliable infrastructure with powerful data capabilities to best serve our customers."
—Tom Pye, Head of IT Operations, PaxportManaged services for a smooth, efficient migration
Outages and service disruptions can be especially problematic in the travel industry, where customers expect instant results and a round-the-clock ability to book flights and hotels. At the same time, companies in the travel industry have to work hard to differentiate themselves from competitors by providing new, engaging experiences for their end customers.
"We knew that Google Cloud was the right choice for us because it gives us a highly scalable and reliable infrastructure with powerful data capabilities to best serve our customers," says Tom. "We mostly conducted a lift-and-shift out of our data centers into Google Cloud. At the same time, we quickly recognized other opportunities to adjust our IT stack for greater agility, faster deployments, and a smoother data pipeline."
Managed Services Provider CTS worked closely with Paxport to ensure a streamlined migration. With so many requirements, CTS helped Paxport navigate purchasing with partner-provided cost reductions and simplified procurement. CTS also provides Paxport with guidance on security and governance reviews, as well as support to further streamline Paxport’s use of Google Cloud technologies.
"We have regular calls with CTS, and they provide invaluable guidance regarding our use of Google Cloud tools, making sure all of our stakeholders’ needs are met," says Tom. "Having a CTS technical point of contact is also very helpful as we continue to grow our business on Google Cloud."
Paxport reduced its total infrastructure costs by 8 percent through CTS and uses the partner as an extra layer of security governance. As Paxport is a PCI-compliant business, CTS acts as an external, independent source of governance through auditing.
"Having a CTS technical point of contact is also very helpful as we continue to grow our business on Google Cloud."
—Tom Pye, Head of IT Operations, PaxportModernized infrastructure for greater reliability and agility
In just four months, Paxport went live on Google Cloud, leveraging Google Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Google Cloud Storage, and Cloud SQL to strike a balance between containerized microservices and a monolithic application within its systems. Since going live, Paxport has enjoyed almost constant uptime, with no major service outages or infrastructure failures.
"Before migrating to Google Cloud several years ago, we had weekly and sometimes daily IT failures that made it difficult to fulfill our customer SLAs," says Tom. "Today, everything runs smoothly. We can sleep better at night knowing that our infrastructure is in good shape. This also helps us stay focused on development, deployment, and customer service."
When Paxport was still running on its legacy data centers, it would take two to three weeks to create a new development environment. With GKE and other Google Cloud infrastructure, Paxport can now develop a solution, containerize it locally, deploy it to container registry, and have an environment set up and ready for testing within a matter of two hours.
All of this translates to maximizing the value of customer services, as well as streamlined onboarding of new suppliers that provide value-added solutions in the Paxport environment. Shortly after developers complete their work on projects, Paxport can deploy a containerized microservice handler for customers.
In addition to offering business units a modernized IT infrastructure with tools such as GKE and Google Compute Engine, departments can easily access the right Google Cloud solutions to support their needs.
BigQuery, Firebase, and Google Cloud Storage with GKE to handle containerization and scaling to support the large volume of incoming data.
In addition, standardizing on Google Cloud put Paxport in a strong position to handle the abrupt drop in travel activity when COVID-19 impacted travel worldwide. Compared to fixed costs of on-premises data centers, Google Cloud solutions could be scaled down or up to keep pace with demands. This, along with support and guidance from CTS, helped to lower costs when demand fell, and scale back up affordably as travel resumes.
"By leveraging Google Cloud and having CTS’ support, we are in a strong position to continue improving the products and services that our customers depend on."
—Tom Pye, Head of IT Operations, PaxportReaching more companies with advanced travel industry solutions
Paxport is poised to continue growing with new services to more customers. New distribution centers (NDCs), or the next generation of online travel agents and booking services, are a particular focus for Paxport moving forward. By providing a standardized API platform across the travel industry, Paxport can offer end-to-end products and services to enable companies to better align travel services with customers’ exact needs.
"By leveraging Google Cloud and having CTS’ support, we are in a strong position to continue improving the products and services that our customers depend on," says Tom. "We made a giant leap with this migration, and it has worked out well. We are well-positioned to meet the demands of the travel industry today and in the future."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Paxport Group UK Ltd.
Paxport provides travel companies with end-to-end solutions for data caching, booking management, search, finance, and more. Paxport’s customers have access to everything from flight and hotel aggregation to merchandising and virtual card payment support - all within a centralized platform.
About CTS
CTS works with organizations to modernize their technology stack, providing consultancy, implementation, billing and managed services across both Google Cloud and Google Workspace.