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By Loic de Kergommeau
The 2007 Rugby World Cup hosted by France was
a hot ticket. And, thanks to a complete IT overhaul
engineered by CSC, Billetel — 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.“We were in the paradoxical situation of knowing what the finished product was,” says Gstalder, “without knowing exactly how to obtain it.”
Once Billetel chose the software,
it needed to find just the right partner
to implement the technology. After
requesting proposals, Billetel chose CSC
for 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.
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