Aeroplan and BEA Flying High with AquaLogic Commerce Service

By now you know about Elastic Path’s OEM relationship with BEA. The analysts have blogged about BEA’s re-entry into ecommerce and we’ve been spreading the word our customers and prospects (many of whom are already using some BEA components).

Since the announcement a few months back, some of the EP crew met up with our new colleagues at a BEA soiree somewhere in some bright shiny city in Nevada and learned about what BEA’s big platform picture looks like.

Importantly for us too, they started conversations about how AquaLogic Commerce Services (the BEA-i-fied version of EP) fits in to this map (BTW, this is also a common topic on Josh Lannin’s ALCS blog).

Aeroplan differentiates themselves by being an innovator and finding new ways for customers to use their “miles” from spa treatments to donations to Schools Without Borders who use the miles to get volunteers to needful places (note that Aeroplan won a middleware integration award too).

Anyhow, now with a few months under the relationship belt, we are beginning to see the joyful results of the joint efforts with the release of a BEA/Aeroplan study called “Next Gen Loyalty Marketing” (.pdf).

You may recall the Aeroplan case study I wrote last year - well this report goes a step further into their technical workings and describes the total infrastructure experience using (you guessed it) BEA’s AquaLogic pieces to solve a tricky puzzle - elegantly and efficiently.

Here are a few snippets to peruse and the whole report (BEA and Aeroplan Case Study - Next Gen Loyalty Marketing) is attached as .pdf for your homework.

“Our business was changing dramatically and we needed a business platform that would allow us to turn all of our creative ideas into reality,” said Remi Lafrance, Director of Technology—Architecture, Strategy & Operations at Aeroplan.

{snip}

Aeroplan considered a number of options and ultimately selected BEA WebLogic Integration as the backbone for a revamped infrastructure and BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services for storefront and back-office operations. The infrastructure is based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

“We evaluated platforms based on robustness, price, and a real-world proof of concept,” said Lafrance. “BEA demonstrated to us that it was the right choice to address our business requirements. The feature set, reliability and support for open standards were very impressive. It is truly a business enabler.”

{snip}

Among the unique aspects of Aeroplan’s business, and an important competitive differentiator, is the ability for members to redeem miles for hotel rooms and car rentals in real time and completely online. No other loyalty program offers that type of redemption.

“It is a tribute to BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services that we’re able to integrate with travel service providers to offer our members such valuable rewards,” said Lafrance. “Car rentals and hotel bookings can be complex transactions involving real-time inventory and price management. By eliminating the big technical obstacles, AquaLogic Commerce Services helps us make travel planning faster, easier and more convenient for our members.”

The BEA solution is running in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment. The primary database system is MySQL.

{snip}

“The robust feature set in BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services has helped us to diversify our product offerings, expand our business partnerships and eliminate some barriers to revenue growth,” said Lafrance. “We’ve become more effective at converting customer contact into revenue. Our business has increased significantly and we have a strong foundation for future commerce growth.”