By Rajani Baburajan TMCnet Contributor Earlier this year, Microsoft (News – Alert) announced the general availability of Windows Azure, a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform.
Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand computing and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft datacenters.
Microsoft’s cloud platform has been now extended to hospitality industry. The benefits of Microsoft approach to cloud computing for hospitality include immediate operational cost reductions, the opportunity to better allocate capital and other resources, and the ability to accelerate change by engaging an ecosystem of partners with solutions optimized for the Microsoft platform and Windows Azure, according to company officials.
To leverage the benefits of this platform, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group announced that it has standardized its IT architecture on the Microsoft platform for competitive advantage and to deliver a highly responsive “connected journey” experience for its guests.
Mandarin Oriental’s decision to standardize the IT architecture is part of its overarching strategy to build a highly responsive IT infrastructure with the applications and tools needed to provide personalized guest experiences worldwide, Mandarin Oriental officials said.
The hotel chain is virtualizing its hotel systems as a key step toward Windows Azure and the public cloud. It has plans to implement its first fully virtualized hotel later this year.
Microsoft technologies will provide Mandarin Oriental with a single, highly streamlined IT platform that spans the entire organization, from the mobile and digital consumer touch points up through mid- and back-office operations and beyond, they added.
Mandarin Oriental is working with Microsoft and its core ISVs as they enhance their applications to take advantage of Windows Azure so that it can have further cost-cutting and consolidation.
The hotel group has completed the server virtualization stage using Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology and has already realized significant savings, increased systems availability and a reduction of carbon emissions.
Mandarin Oriental now operates, or has under development, 41 hotels representing over 10,000 rooms in 26 countries. Mandarin Oriental has standardized exclusively on Microsoft technologies for more than 10 years and has evolved a single, highly streamlined IT platform that spans the entire organization. Mandarin Oriental is working with PAR Springer-Miller Systems to deploy its next generation hospitality platform on Windows Azure.
Microsoft’s hospitality industry ecosystem partners include Agilysys, PAR Springer-Miller Systems, Newmarket International, Red Rock Software, SoftHotel and SuiteLinq, as well as key customers who provide guidance to the ecosystem through participation in Microsoft’s hospitality industry customer advisory board.Earlier in June, VUE Software, a provider of industry-specific business technology solutions, announced they are moving the Software-as-a-Service or “SaaS (News – Alert)” versions of the VUE Compensation Management and VUE IncentivePoint solutions to the Microsoft Windows Azure platform, TMCnet reported.
Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Erin Harrison
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