Amadeus launches industry-first open source framework to further innovation
Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, last week announced it is opening one of its core technology frameworks – Amadeus ARIA Templates – to the open source community. An industry first, the application framework written in JavaScript is set to revolutionise the way the travel industry builds new user interfaces, drastically easing the challenges associated with development of travel mobile apps.
Over the previous three years Amadeus has been using the ARIA Templates framework internally to develop its professional web-based products including Altéa Reservation Desk Top Web, the internet based interface for airline reservation agents and Selling Platform Connect, the world’s first web-based GDS interface for travel agents. The ARIA framework also powers the latest releases of Amadeus’ consumer-facing mobile apps for the company’s airline customers.
ARIA Templates’ ability to support rich, enterprise-grade, high performance online and mobile applications means the travel industry can access reliable selling applications from internet browsers. Importantly, the approach also reduces the development cycle for new innovations as software updates can be rolled out in an instant.
Amadeus Vice President – Product Development, Sales and e-Commerce Development Denis Lacroix said, “Opening our code to third party developers is a critical step to achieving our technology vision and ensures Amadeus customers will benefit from the widest possible range of development innovation.”
He continued: “Many of the world’s most successful applications are built to run on open-source platforms like Google’s Android. With this progressive move our selling interfaces are now open to clever ideas from around the world. In addition, the use of ARIA Templates within Amadeus is increasingly pervasive, with upcoming products in Hotel IT and Airport IT.”
This powerful development tool is a Java-script code library designed for UI developers in order to ease production of robust and scalable enterprise web applications. Key benefits include:
Overcoming the challenges of mobile: Device and operating system fragmentation means development of native mobile apps is extremely costly for airlines and the travel industry. The alternative mobile website-only approach is vulnerable to slowness as the mobile web suffers from low levels of bandwidth. Amadeus’ approach is a lightweight, ‘hybrid’ mobile application offering the performance of native apps whilst constraining costs which can be built using the ARIA Template framework. Reducing development cycles: ARIA Templates enables a SAAS based approach to speed up the deployment of updates to Amadeus’ products allowing software to be updated automatically through the browser as new developments come online.
A simple framework for third party developers: Developers using ARIA Templates benefit from the familiar MVC pattern allowing for clear code design re-use, and sharing, making application customisation a simple process.
Furthering innovation: Third party developers now have the means to propose and build advances to Amadeus’ selling interface, opening up a raft of new ideas. As the framework is already used in key Amadeus products, the company has a long-term commitment to investing in and maintaining ARIA Templates.
ARIA Templates is not Amadeus’ first JavaScript library, although it is the first to be released as open source software and is licensed under the flexible Apache 2.0 license. Developers wishing to learn more or participate in the ARIA open source community should visit http://ariatemplates.com/ and can obtain the ARIA source-code at Github.
