5 ms·

I took the CTO position at a company AccessUSA now HotelBeds which is a travel consolidator, they had a very old system built on fox-pro for the reservation sys

by kls 16y ago

I took the CTO position at a company AccessUSA now HotelBeds which is a travel consolidator, they had a very old system built on fox-pro for the reservation system. The original developer had pretty much abandoned any updates to the system and was just sucking licensing revenue out of it. It was a totally closed system, so it could not be modified from an external development team and all advances made towards the original developer met luke warm responses. Several consultants had came in and told the CEO that there was no way to graduate out of the system, that it would require a total rewrite of the system. The CEO had went through 3 failed attempts to build a new system with external vendors the second of which folded shop and then the CEO got a call from an Indian company saying that they had been working on the system for over a year and had not goten paid. Apparently the front company that folded was subbing everything to offshore firms without letting the customer know. Anyway, all attempts failed and the one most critical business issue was that the rates and allotments for hotel rooms needed to be available to customers like Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Expedia in real time. It was a read only problem. I set up an export from fox-pro to a database cluster (I can't ever remember which one now (Oracle or MSSQL). Built some web services on top of it to expose the data and published the WSDL. All tolled we (2 people full time) spent a week building the services and added over 30 million in revenue, the first year. I have done some others, but that is probably my best time to money ratio of my career.

SteveEvans 16y ago
Great project! Travel companies usually dive straight into the latest res system when they often don't need to with the beauty of web services. Sounds like you both saved and made them a packet!
- kls 16y ago
  Yeah, here is the kicker, when I drew up the architectural diagrams, I showed the CEO and the Technical Director (who at the time was more the server admin type, that why I was brought in) and the CEO asked the Director "All of the other teams told us this could not be done, do you think this will work", to which the director replied "All of the other teams failed, so why should we believe a word they said". Then the CEO said to me, if you are so sure of it, why don't you forgo your salary and bonus for the year and I will just pay you a cut per booking. I was really new at the company and did not know their volume, so I declined, with the offer of if it does not work you can fire me and keep the pay for the time I spent on it. That is one of the biggest regrets of my carrer. I got my pay day though when we exited, so I can't complain.
parenthesis 16y ago
It's "all told", not "all tolled": http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/all-told/ http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/all-told/
- kls 16y ago
  Who gives a crap, really the meaning was conveyed. I have serious writing language disabilities, just take a look at my post history for the obvious proof. Sniping me for grammer critique is like picking up the local bar buzzard, not much of an accomplishment and not something you want to brag about. I am low hanging fruit. http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/LBLD.htm http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/LBLD.htm
  - parenthesis 16y ago
    I'm very sorry you took my comment as sniping; that wasn't my intention at all. I was pointing out the mistake because I found it to be a very interesting mistake — as I hope is conveyed in the link I gave — nestling in your otherwise exemplary written English. In fact, it caused me to momentarily question whether it was I who had got that idiom wrong for all these years.
    - kls 16y ago
      No problem, I jump the gun on this one a lot and I apologize for that, if it was not your intent. I just get the crap beat out of me by grammer nazis all the time and if I could fix the issue I would, but no amount of people pointing it out is going to fix it. I have worked and worked at it for years (it's one of the major reasons, I post). But just as I will never, no matter how much I stive to, know my right from my left, or be able to accurately estimate the elapse of time, I will also overlook and substitute wrong words in written form. It's really, really frustrating to be intelligent with a language disability and I get really pissy about it some times, for that I am sorry.

by kls 16y ago

SteveEvans 16y ago

Great project! Travel companies usually dive straight into the latest res system when they often don't need to with the beauty of web services. Sounds like you both saved and made them a packet!

kls 16y ago
Yeah, here is the kicker, when I drew up the architectural diagrams, I showed the CEO and the Technical Director (who at the time was more the server admin type, that why I was brought in) and the CEO asked the Director "All of the other teams told us this could not be done, do you think this will work", to which the director replied "All of the other teams failed, so why should we believe a word they said". Then the CEO said to me, if you are so sure of it, why don't you forgo your salary and bonus for the year and I will just pay you a cut per booking. I was really new at the company and did not know their volume, so I declined, with the offer of if it does not work you can fire me and keep the pay for the time I spent on it. That is one of the biggest regrets of my carrer. I got my pay day though when we exited, so I can't complain.

parenthesis 16y ago

It's "all told", not "all tolled": http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/all-told/ http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/all-told/

kls 16y ago
Who gives a crap, really the meaning was conveyed. I have serious writing language disabilities, just take a look at my post history for the obvious proof. Sniping me for grammer critique is like picking up the local bar buzzard, not much of an accomplishment and not something you want to brag about. I am low hanging fruit. http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/LBLD.htm http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/LBLD.htm
- parenthesis 16y ago
  I'm very sorry you took my comment as sniping; that wasn't my intention at all. I was pointing out the mistake because I found it to be a very interesting mistake — as I hope is conveyed in the link I gave — nestling in your otherwise exemplary written English. In fact, it caused me to momentarily question whether it was I who had got that idiom wrong for all these years.
  - kls 16y ago
    No problem, I jump the gun on this one a lot and I apologize for that, if it was not your intent. I just get the crap beat out of me by grammer nazis all the time and if I could fix the issue I would, but no amount of people pointing it out is going to fix it. I have worked and worked at it for years (it's one of the major reasons, I post). But just as I will never, no matter how much I stive to, know my right from my left, or be able to accurately estimate the elapse of time, I will also overlook and substitute wrong words in written form. It's really, really frustrating to be intelligent with a language disability and I get really pissy about it some times, for that I am sorry.