IBM Virtual Linux to help plan road trips for travelers

Computerworld - By the end of the year, the longtime trip-planning bible, Mobil Travel Guide, will expand its offerings to over-the-road travelers with the help of IBM and Linux.
In an announcement today, the Park Ridge, Ill.-based publisher said that it's hired the IT giant to build and run a new "Mobil Companion" Web site that will allow customers to pay monthly fees to plan road trips online.
Using SuSE Linux on an IBM zSeries mainframe, the outsourced system will be set up as virtual Linux servers to run the operations from IBM data centers run by IBM Global Services. The five-year, multimillion-dollar deal is the first major publicly announced contract under IBM's Linux Virtual Services program, which was unveiled in July (see story).
A highlight of the deal, said Paul Mercurio, CIO at Exxon Mobil Travel Guide LLC, which is owned by Exxon Mobil Corp., is that by using an infrastructure of virtual servers administered by IBM, his company will be able to launch what he expects to be a rapidly growing business without having to invest a huge amount of capital. The virtual services model from IBM is based on a utility computing formula, which charges customers for the computing power they need as they need it.
"The ability for us to ratchet up and ratchet down capacity seasonally in response to seasonal travel patterns allows us to contain costs," Mercurio said.
About six vendors responded to the company's request for bids, and IBM and its Linux virtual services approach was selected after looking at various options, he said. IBM also proposed an alternative plan using a more traditional approach with standard servers rather than the mainframe, but that plan was rejected. "We really did not want to put in place internal infrastructure," Mercurio said.
Warren Hart, director of e-business hosting at IBM Global Services, said that under the Linux Virtual Services utility model, the travel guide company will be able to focus on its business and leave the IT issues to IBM. Mobil Travel Guide won't be charged for peak usage, as in traditional contracts, but on its average usage over each day, making it more economical, he said.
When the system goes online in December, it will allow customers to plan their road trips online and make on-the-fly adjustments to itineraries. Travelers will be able to get mapped-out routes with information on where to eat and stay and what to see as they head onto the road in their cars, trucks, motorcycles or RVs.
"We have a real strong gap in the market in terms of supporting the needs of an upscale traveler who wants to take a road trip," Mercurio said.
Today, the travel guide company has a Web site that offers information on road trip destinations, but there are no trip planning features.
Mobil Travel Guides have been published since the late 1950s to give advice to drivers as they travel around the country.
In a related announcement, Mobil Travel Guide has also chosen IBM's WebSphere Application Server to develop and deploy Web-based applications running on Linux. Eventually, the company will move all of its Web operations to the new services from its current platform of Microsoft Windows NT and Oracle, Mercurio said.