TravelSky, the top provider of IT solutions for Chinese air travel and tourism business, has renewed its commitment to Unisys services and server technology in a major deal with Unisys China with the aim to back up the transaction peaks driven by China's developing aviation segment.

The US$43 million agreement, inked during the first quarter of the existing year, comprises the Unisys USAS Passenger Services Solution, two ClearPath Dorado Model 790 mainframes, additional metered processing capacity, infrastructure management suite and maintenance services, clustering hardware and EMC storage solutions.

Besides, Unisys is helping TravelSky to execute a private cloud computing solution designed to offer up augmented automation, self diagnostics, server utilisation, compliance and ease of management within the data centre.

TravelSky operates the reservations and departure control systems used by China's air carriers, and also maintains the global distribution system for China's travel agencies. The firm relies on the Unisys USAS application and ClearPath servers as its core IT infrastructure to offer the Chinese airline industry a variety of mission-critical applications including an inventory control system, global distribution system and a departure control system.

With air travel growing rapidly in China, TravelSky needed increased IT capacity to support its customers. To meet the growing transaction demand, TravelSky has added two ClearPath Dorado Model 790 mainframes to its three existing ClearPath Dorado servers. The ClearPath mainframes are clustered together using Unisys Extended Transaction Capacity (XTC) capability to significantly increase transaction processing capacity compared to a one-host system.

Unisys will also help TravelSky to execute a private cloud computing approach in order to augment the flexibility and cost-efficiency of its data centre.

TravelSky vice president, Mr. Rong Gang stated, "The Unisys private cloud approach allows us to gain the flexible operational benefits of cloud computing within the security of our own data centre. Highly automated operations and immediate, as-needed self-service provisioning of resources means that our IT resources can be quickly matched to fluctuating business demand and the transaction peaks created by large scale events such as Expo
2010. This will also make our data centre easier to manage."

Unisys has over 45 years experience offering advanced, mission-critical IT solutions to the aviation business.

Nineteen of the top 25 airlines and over 200 around the world rely on Unisys solutions.