Expedia Goes Faster with AWS Cloud Computing

Expedia Inc. is the largest global online business and leisure travel company. Among its brands is Expedia itself, which is the largest online travel service, with websites located in more than 10 countries, as well as Hotels and Hotwire, in the accommodation area, which maintain websites in more than 60 countries, plus other travel brands.

With such credentials, it is possible to imagine the size of the simultaneous traffic of users in its portals, both for direct sales to the end user and those made by travel agencies and airlines around the world.

Case Expedia/AWS

For Amazon Web Services (AWS), Expedia has become one of the great case of worldwide success since 2010, when the travel company joined cloud computing, launching Expedia Suggest Service (ESS), a search engine that cannot be flawed. A single error, according to the company, is the main reason for abandoning the site.

Until then, Expedia operated all its services from its own datacenters located in Chandler, Arizona, United States. When migrating to using ESS on AWS cloud computing, the development team concluded that ESS had to run in locations physically close to users to ensure a fast, responsive service with minimal system latency.

The decisive reason for hiring AWS services, according to Expedia's director of technology, Murari Gopalan, came after this realization that Amazon Web Services would be the only solution to support customers in the Asia-Pacific region, from the point of view architecture, infrastructure and proximity to the user. “Without AWS, there would be no way to solve the problem. It is the only global provider with the local infrastructure in that region to serve these users,” he stated.

The ESS/AWS results

“Using AWS, we were able to develop and launch the ESS service within three months,” says Magesh Chandramouli, Architecture Manager. According to him, ESS uses algorithms based on the customer's location and should present aggregated shopping suggestions, as well as using past customer reservation data to present suggestions when each of the new customers starts typing.

Chandramouli reports that using ESS on AWS cloud computing allowed the wait time for the Expedia user to go from 700 millionths of a second to less than 50 millionths of a second. The system allows a customer to simply type in 'sea' to purchase an airline ticket and immediately see on-screen suggestions for bundled services in Seattle, SeaTac, and other relevant destinations whose name begins with 'Sea'. ESS is also being used in European countries.

Like Amazon Web Services' other large global customers, Expedia uses AWS to develop applications faster, process large volumes of data, and solve problems before they turn into disasters. By deploying AWS cloud computing to build a standard deployment model, Expedia's development teams can now quickly build infrastructure for new initiatives.

Partnership in Brazil

Amazon Web Service (AWS) has just inaugurated its third cloud computing availability zone in Brazil. Now there are two in São Paulo and one in Rio de Janeiro. While other providers charge for fixed packages of services, AWS allows you to purchase partial packages, that is, you only pay for what you use. And even better, it can scale according to demand behavior.

Sky.One Sky.One strategic partner of AWS in Brazil and can guide you in hiring the best solutions according to your company's profile.

Do you need cloud computing solutions in Brazil? Contact us. 

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