The popular budget airline easyJet is deploying a range of Microsoft technology, in particular the IIS7 web server, as part of an aggressive expansion plan for its web site.
EasyJet's web site currently handles 98 per cent of its bookings, making any changes can have serious implications for the business.
The company estimates that even an additional one per cent conversion of visitors would increase revenue by 17 million.
At the Windows Server 2008 launch yesterday, Paul Curtis, head of application architecture at easyJet, explained how his team had already created a new web site with advanced features based on Windows Server 2008 technology and the Silverlight presentation layer, in combination with SQL Server 2008, as a proof-of-concept for internal assessment.
What the new web site will enable visitors to do is to choose a destination, view it via Microsoft Virtual Earth, and see all of the hotels and points-of-interest within a defined radius. This leverages the new geo-spacial data types that are present in SQL Server 2008. "Rather than having to store lots of complex data, what they were able to do was interface with Virtual Earth to draw a polygon representing the distance that could be travelled and show all the points of interest within it," explained Curtis to IT PRO. "It made it really simple to do something that with today's technologies would be pretty complex."
Curtis explained how the modularity of IIS7, one of the key components of Windows 2008 offered specific benefits to his team. "What we're able to do, rather than having to execute all the modules that come out of the box, as with IIS6, is actually choose the specific modules that are key to running our specific application. Fundamentally, it's a much easier way of fine tuning our application."
This lean, mean approach delivers increased performance, which Curtis identified as a key driver for adoption of the new Microsoft OS. "One of the key things we always try to do is improve the response time for users. As well as fine tuning the database, we want to make the web platform is as responsive as possible. While the stuff we're looking to do is very cool, it comes at a price because the web page becomes a lot heavier, so that's when the execution times becomes vital."
In addition to performance, Curtis highlighted the improved management tools of Windows Server 2008 as another key benefit. "When trying to configure ASP.net and IIS6 to run together there's lots of files you have to manage and configuration settings [to deal with]. What [Microsoft has] done with 08 and IIS7 is integrate them. You basically have one place where you tune your application and its settings."
"[Easyjet has a ] Web farm of 36 web servers, so if it's cumbersome to configure them, then there are plenty of opportunities for people to do the wrong thing. With a much simpler configuration model, it makes it much easier to manage the web platform."
Summing up, Curtis said, "For us, Server 2008 is pretty much entirely about performance. We're setting our stall out that when the enhancements arrive in the future, well be running on an optimised platform."
