Travel agencies use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to save money
Travel agents often book outside of the corporate booking engine. A good example of this is Ryanair or easyJet flights, and other tour operators or dmcs, who may give negotiated rates over the phone. These manually booked elements, bear risks. Risk of typos, date errors, risk of incorrect costs. If left un-checked these bear a […]
Deliver innovation via micro services orchestration.
Traditional applications can be monolithic beasts with APIs as the final layer These services present a prescribed flow are often inflexible and were built to do a specific purpose. Traditional applications are usually object oriented with a series of services being called internally, and eventually rendered as a soap/rest API. Quite often with all functions […]
Security Design patterns: CIA triad
When reviewing systems, I use this model to provide useful context to ensure that applications/services have sufficient processing to ensure data security is managed and maintained. Confidentiality – what level of secrecy is expected for this product or service, how do we protect it, how do we allow access to the data Integrity – how […]
When SaaS providers hike their prices.
OpenVPN has been my goto appliance for SSL VPN connections for Devops accessing cloud services, especially as AWS doesn’t have its own SSL VPN gateway! Open VPN provides a good UI and client tools. Until recently I’ve been happy to pay for its annual licence fee as it offered good value, but earlier this year […]
How to wifi enable a Zebra USB label printer.
Zebra printers are one of the most popular label printers, also the printer recommended by Royal Mail Click and Drop (which links to Shopify). For new sign ups Royal mail offer a £150 Zebra GK420D printer which is a great deal but it isn’t a wifi printer (it is usb, serial or parallel). Network versions […]
UK or overseas holidays in 2021?
In our current covid landscape, overseas holidays in 2021 feel quite far away. The question is, is a UK holiday significantly different in cost to an overseas holiday. In review; It’s about the same if you book early. For my example I took prices today (1st Feb) for bookings on the 1st August for 7 […]
Could revenue and accounting departments be in for a challenge for 2021 bookings?
At the minute travel companies are releasing sales promoting a low deposit, fully flexible booking to secure their 2021 holiday. With the current terms, your deposit is refundable (cash/voucher), previously this would have been non-refundable. As a result many consumers are willing to potentially book multiple bookings (to different destinations) on the hopes that they […]
With travel businesses tempting consumers with flexible deals. Is travel really going to be possible before July 2021?
I, like many people rebooked my August 2020 booking to 2021 assuming that the world would be back to normal by then. At the time I thought a year for the virus to be under control was realistic. I didn’t expect the subsequent waves of COVID-19 which followed. Before we start, let me say; […]
A day in the life
During COVID-19, I received a few linked-in requests for interviews about the day to day challenges of a CTO. I have to admit, I didn’t participate but it did trigger me to write this post. As a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) I am responsible for the operation of technology and its associated systems. So I […]
When customer services is less important than profit.
COVID-19 impacted the world economy like no other event. It came very quickly and many companies were not prepared for their staff to be suddenly working remotely. The majority of office workers have in the most part been working from home since March, those which are less fortunate have been furloughed. For some businesses have […]
Will the future bring a world where we trade ad views for (virtual) currency?
Nothing is free. We have become consumers of free apps everywhere. As digital businesses tap into the freemium model (offering their applications for free), we (the consumer) use them. Unknowingly or knowingly we are trading something for that. Vendors, especially game vendors have realised that free delivers more value than paid, and this is where […]
My COVID-19 challenges.
I manage a series of different teams, many of which were office based and desktop machine oriented when covid-19 lockdown occured in March 2020. Before we had the 1st lock down in London, our India team were warned of a potential lockdown due to a nearby office having a case of COVID. We thought we […]