Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Turns to Micro Focus to Reduce Business Intelligence Application Costs by 50 Percent

– Improves customer satisfaction and achieves a return on investment in less than 18 months –

Micro Focus® (LSE.MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application management and modernization solutions, today announced that Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has modernized its Business Intelligence (BI) platform by migrating from a mainframe environment to Microsoft Windows. In doing so, SAS lowered its annual costs associated with the data warehouse and BI applications by 50 percent and the investment paid off in less than 18 months.

“By re-using our existing data warehousing applications in a Windows environment, we delivered the new system much faster than if we had attempted a re-write,” says Per Pettersson, System Manager: Enterprise Data Warehouse, SAS. “At the same time, we were able to provide a better development environment for our programmers and enable our business analysts to exploit contemporary Business Intelligence tools to make more informed decisions based on up to date data.”

To be able to deliver near real-time scenarios for reporting and analysis, SAS realized it had to dramatically modernize its BI capabilities. The company needed a data warehouse with desktop tooling that did not have to compete for mainframe resources and which analysts could use to quickly customize reports, rather than SAS having to rely on an expensive external vendor.

“SAS has realized the benefits of re-using and optimizing its existing applications, with benefits for both its partners and customers,” says Reza C. Warnink, General Manager Northern Europe at Micro Focus. “We are very happy that SAS chose to work with Micro Focus for its BI modernization project.”

Micro Focus’ Revolve® analysis tool helped SAS to map out the viability of the migration from the mainframe to Windows and ensure the airline company adequately scoped the project. Micro Focus Studio™ and Micro Focus Server™ were used to enable the existing COBOL and JCL to be re-used with minimum change and to capitalize on existing COBOL/JCL programming expertise. The migration to a Windows environment also enabled the production of more advanced and accurate reports and analysis for SAS.

The new solution not only lowered cost and provided SAS with a quick return on investment, it also enabled BI batch process time to be cut from six hours to two hours. Quality improvements in BI data gave way to more detailed analysis of Internet reservations, check-ins, and call center interactions, which helped to increase per customer revenues and improve customer relationships. The new Windows-based development environment and the powerful SQL server tools also enabled the IT team to deliver on new requirements much faster than was ever possible using mainframe-based tools.

“The migration opened up many options for us to improve accessibility, relevance and usefulness of data for analysts, management and internal users. It also freed up valuable mainframe resources, making it possible for us to carry out additional analyses in the mainframe environment, which were impossible to conduct prior to working with Micro Focus,” concludes Per Pettersson.

About Micro Focus

Micro Focus, a member of the FTSE 250, provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization and Management software enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. For additional information please visit www.microfocus.com.

About SAS Group

The SAS Group, the Nordic region’s largest listed airline and travel group, offers air transportation and airline-related services. The Group is listed on the Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen stock exchanges through the parent company SAS AB. SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Spanair and Blue1 are members of the world’s largest global airline alliance – Star Alliance™. The Group also includes the airlines Widerøe and airBaltic as well as the partly owned airline Estonian Air and the business area SAS Aviation Services.

Contacts

Micro Focus
Reza C. Warnink, +31 23 5689 138
reza.warnink {at} microfocus(.)com
or
LEWIS PR
Dan Gaffney, 617-226-8844
dang {at} lewispr(.)com