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Leonardo - a Complex Solution for the Transport Industry
Thursday March 28, 2019 16:09 MSK / Sirena-Travel
Leonardo - a Complex Solution for the Transport Industry Speech by Mikhail Yuryevich Baskakov, General Director of Sirena-Travel, at the Regional Aviation - System Element of Mainline Infrastructure conference held during the Transport Week, about the readiness of Russian IT systems for airline migration to domestic platforms and their development projects.

We do not often speak in public, although the system "Siren" is known to all. This name was inherited from Soviet times. We are quite an old company - since 2001 on the market. Siren is not just a software solution, it is a whole infrastructure, a network of enterprises.

It is, in fact, the only Russian distribution system, and, moreover, a full-fledged system adopted in the world, with an international code. We are known in the world and with all the GDS we somehow communicate on equal terms in this market. Comtech is a historic development company. It was established in 1994. “International Processing System” - this company is engaged in receiving card payments. Is friends with banks, quite a successful venture. Today, 60-70% of sales in the world are in fact carried out on the cards. In Russia, a little less, but the trend is to increase. New studio - 2 years ago we bought 2 companies in our mini-holding. The new studio is engaged in Internet solutions, the main solution is the engine for airlines called web sky. There are a number of businesses where the new studio is developing. These are solutions for corporate business, and solutions for agents. Megatek is a historically provider of tour operators support systems, it has been on the market for more than 20 years. The old company, we are now thinking how to develop it.

This year, Sirena-Travel as a distribution system will sell more than 40 million tickets, more precisely - 43 million. This is a significant market share - the entire market will be more than 110 million. We are the first GDSs in the Russian market. We have 18 thousand terminals in 7 thousand points of sale. All 56 airlines were introduced to the new system in just 3 years. The largest company we have is UTair - about 10 million passengers a year. In the distribution part of more than 200 airlines. Today we practically have all the global content in our “supermarket” and are ready to sell it. Separate topic - 280+ airports. In Russia, 246 and is actively developing the DCS system abroad. That is, wherever our customers fly, we dot our DCS and are actively developing.

 

Sirena-Travel is a fully Russian company with Russian capital. Whatever the decision of our government did not take, we will precisely comply with it. Because we are in Russia, employees in Russia, technical support, everything that is required by the law on working with personal data, etc., is located in Russia, in two data centres, Moscow and St. Petersburg. We are thinking about building a third one. Data network providers are also Russian, that is, we comply with all the requirements of Law 152 FZ. Secure communication channels, crypto-protection, with all certificates. And separately we have a PCI DSS certificate, since we accept cards for payment, and this is a necessary condition.

Leonardo - a new integrated product built on other architectural principles, corresponds to practically all that is possible. On the slide all its components. Honestly, while not everything is there to meet the two largest Russian carriers, Aeroflot and S7, I’ll say this separately. But in terms of products, in terms of their quality, the system is implemented at the global level. This product is a brand that is ready, and we are actively replicating it, including abroad. Once again, a completely new platform was created, on completely different principles. IT-technologies are developing very rapidly, in recent years a revolution has actually occurred, and the blockchain, and containers, and clouds, and all this is taken into account in our system. There is practically no modern one - Leonardo is the youngest of all the systems that exist in the world.

We passed an independent study of the British company T2RL, which assesses the system in terms of quality and functionality. The result on the slide - from the 14th place in the world, Sirena-Travel has moved to 8th. It is clear that before joining the top three we still have work to do, but we are striving to go there.

Now why Leonardo does not yet meet the requirements of the two largest air carriers in Russia. By and large, there are only two problems: 1) Participation of the airline in global alliances. We did not develop alliance functionality before realising that we have tasks to implement 56 second-tier carriers into the system and that leading airlines have other IT partners. But now the functionality has already been developed. What is the problem with his introduction? There are only two airlines in Russia participating in global alliances: Aeroflot and S7. It is practically impossible to implement an alliance segment without concrete testing, and it is necessary to work it out in the corresponding system there abroad. There is a long list of checks to go through. And without that side, and without the customer it is impossible to do in principle. We understand this, our Russian colleagues understand it. We are ready for this. We are waiting for companies to start doing this with us. And we do not ask for money. And this work must begin. 2) We are inferior in terms of revenue management system. Aeroflot probably has one of the best revenue management systems in the world today. The company deliberately invested in it for 10-15 years. This is very serious mathematics, very serious mathematical models. Here, Russian developers, to put it mildly, are rather weak. This needs to be addressed. Therefore, Sirena-Travel decided to open a new project. This model is called Origin Destination. The project starts in the first quarter of 2019.

The next slide is about import substitution. It shows how we started and where we are migrating. We started working on Sequent's computers; this is an American company that IBM later bought. Then we had IBM. Today we are working on Intel servers that are built specifically for us. Servers of this type are still developed by the Chinese firm Huawei. We use the Supermicro or Russian assembly. Linux OS is open source, and here we are independent of Western intervention. About the software. Since 2017, the migration of the Leonardo system has begun. We wrote everything on Oracle. Since 2017, almost all of Leonardo has been transferred to PostgreSQL. For 4 years past year, the progress of the system is enormous - today it is not inferior in quality to Oracle. I emphasise that this is a certified version, and when we complete the migration, this dependence will not be.

Sirena-Travel is a member of the global transport. Here is a list of BSPs in which we are accredited. In terms of 32 countries. With all the systems that are present in the world in the market, we somehow have a relationship.

Now the word multimodality sounds everywhere. Sirena-Travel already sells Russian Railways tickets through innovative mobility, we sell Deutsche Bahn, we sell hotels, we sell extra services ... We already sell all this now. At the same time, we are developing a new system. What is the difference? We understand that the principles of retail in the world are changing. Need geoservices, door-to-door sales, etc. The man says he wants to Paris. And he does not know what mode of transport he will go there. And we have to give it a ready solution. This can not but suggest that transportation should in principle be multimodal, in which different types of transport are arranged. What problems? It is necessary to develop general rules. The discrepancy between the rules, especially the rules of return and exchange of tickets, liability for the passenger ... There is a lot of work. We hope, the Ministry of Transport with legal support, not specifically Sirena, but will help us all. Therefore, it is necessary to synchronise the rules, and only then it will all work as a single shipment.

And finally - we created the Transhost system. She recently began to take root. System for river-men and helicopter pilots. This project is multimodal, that is, we are already going quite actively in this direction.

Summing up, I want to say that Russian systems are largely ready for airline migration. We are very grateful to the government for finally putting us in the same conditions with foreign colleagues. There is hope that we all will be honest in this market to compete and develop.