Billetel Sells More Tickets Faster With Open Source Technologies

The 2007 Rugby World Cup hosted by France is a hot ticket. And, thanks to a complete IT overhaul engineered by CSC, Billitel — the IT subsidiary of Fnac, France’s largest entertainment ticketing company — sold a record 90,000 of those tickets in just one day.

Working with venues and event promoters, Fnac has experienced remarkable growth in its sales volume and complexity. It now offers tickets to more than 6,000 sports, cultural and entertainment events daily, representing nearly 50,000 individual performances each year. Besides providing immediate tickets through its 108 stores, 65 in France and 43 abroad, Fnac also sells tickets by phone and — most popularly — online.

"Four or five years ago, we were selling 8 million tickets in nearly 300 outlets," says Bertrand Gstalder, Fnac’s events and travels manager. "Today, we are up to 12 million tickets in 450 outlets, representing 800 ticket offices."

Fnac's old IT management application simply couldn't keep up. Developed in 1991, the Billetel application was old, poorly documented and managed by third-party maintenance providers. Fnac needed an application that could track seat availability, display event information and ensure efficient ticket sales and printing 24/7. The new application would also be used by Carrefour, Géant, Casino and Printemps stores. With so many moving parts in the sales enterprise, flexibility was key.

"We were in the paradoxical situation of knowing what the finished product was," says Gstalder, "without knowing exactly how to obtain it."

Open software: a proactive choice

Faced with these challenges, Billetel chose to use only open source tools — Linux operating system, MySQL database, Jboss application server, Apache Web server and J2EE developments. While these technologies are frequently used for critical systems, this was the first time the application had been subjected to such extreme load and performance constraints.

Once Billetel chose the software, it needed to find just the right partner to implement the technology. After requesting proposals, Billetel chose CSC for both its professional and technological expertise, as well as its track record. Fnac and CSC had previously collaborated on a new music distribution platform, allowing Web surfers to easily and legally select, buy and download music. Now, in preparation for this large-scale, complex project, CSC doubled its workforce to 55 high-tech personnel, bringing in experienced human resources staff to manage the project.

A challenging endeavor

The CSC team spent 500 days in laboratory mode simulating the extremely high workloads to which the application would be subjected, which included the ability to handle 1,000 SQL requests per second in extremely variable conditions.

"This project — which could be considered a basic technical challenge due to the pioneering use of open software and the interface with over 200 third-party systems — soon revealed itself to be an immense functional challenge too," says Joëlle Sikorav, CSC project director. Along with migrating code from the previous application to the new technology, it was also necessary to list highly complex management rules to find, in the new tool, all the functionalities of the old one. Ultimately, the project required the writing of 1.3 million lines of Java code.

High performance requirements

Overcoming the business complexity caused by innumerable management rules was just part of the challenge. The Billetel application also had to cope with extremely high-volume demand — a system breakdown might lead promoters to switch to a competing ticket agency.

"The main risk was that one of the transactions might burden the system, and that — through a lack of imperviousness — would lead, via the domino effect, to the collapse of the whole application," explains Laurent Bénintende, director of Billetel.

The November 2005 launch went off without a hitch. "CSC’s professionalism was the major success factor," says Gstalder. "When difficulties arose, everyone hung on and managed to redouble their involvement." And Billetel achieved record sales during the following holiday season.

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