SOUTHLAKE, Texas, May 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Accelerating
its strategy to reimagine the business of travel, Sabre Corporation
(NASDAQ: SABR) today announced a long-term strategic agreement with
Microsoft. As part of this new agreement, Microsoft will empower
the migration of Sabre's commercial applications to Microsoft Azure
by investing cloud development expertise and services in support of
Sabre's vision to lead an industry evolution in retailing,
distribution and fulfillment.
"The cloud presents an opportunity to rapidly innovate, create
and deliver new business value for Sabre and our customers," said
Joe DiFonzo, Sabre CIO. "Microsoft
is more than a technology provider for us. Their team will be a key
asset in our transformation, through proven leadership in the cloud
space along with industry expertise and best practice methodology
to help us realize our vision."
Together the two companies will work to help Sabre better
harness the power of its data and apply artificial intelligence and
advanced analytics to create new services for hotel, agency and
airline customers. Sabre technology processes over $120 billion of estimated travel spend each year,
and every minute Sabre systems serve thousands of travel agents,
board thousands of passengers, and process hundreds of bookings. As
Sabre continues to evolve its cloud strategy, the company's
customers will be able to offer travelers more personalized and
integrated experiences – especially important for Sabre's strategy
to innovate Beyond NDC and deliver next-generation retailing and
distribution solutions.
"Cloud technology is critical to our development of a
microservices architecture, which will offer our customers
bite-sized functionality that can be used independently or combined
to build large, complex applications with accelerated speed to
market," said Vish Saoji, Sabre
CTO.
Microsoft Azure also provides Sabre a global footprint with
trusted infrastructure and advanced platform capabilities. Through
this agreement, Sabre's cloud transition will enhance the stability
and security of its products, and a multi-faceted cloud approach
will allow Sabre products to intelligently distribute workload
across geographies, resulting in better performance and ensuring
continuous service availability.
"Sabre is an established leader in the travel technology space,
and we are excited to work closely with them to draw out
data-driven insights that can reimagine the business of travel,"
said Kate Johnson, president,
Microsoft U.S. "Microsoft's cloud services will bring a range
of new capabilities to Sabre that unlock even more value for their
customers and will help them to succeed in transforming their
industry with intelligent technologies."
Sabre and Microsoft partnered earlier this year on the pilot
launch of an A.I.-powered chatbot, "Ella," that explores how
artificial intelligence can help travel agencies better serve
travelers by fulfilling their most common service and support
requests with smart technology. In developing the chatbot, Sabre
leveraged Microsoft Bot Framework and a selection of Microsoft
Cognitive Services, including Language Understanding Intelligent
Service (LUIS) which provides simple tools to build language
models, allowing any application or bot to understand natural
language commands and react accordingly.
About Sabre
Sabre Corporation is the leading technology provider to the global
travel industry. Sabre's software, data, mobile and distribution
solutions are used by hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotel
properties to manage critical operations, including passenger and
guest reservations, revenue management, flight, network and crew
management. Sabre also operates a leading global travel
marketplace, which processes more than US$120 billion of global travel spend annually by
connecting travel buyers and suppliers. Headquartered in
Southlake, Texas, USA, Sabre
serves customers in more than 160 countries around the world.
SABR-F
Media contact: sabrenews@sabre.com
Investor contact: sabre.investorrelations@sabre.com
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SOURCE Sabre Corporation