SNAPSHOT
PRICELINE.COM
priceline.com
Headquarters:
Norwalk, Connecticut
Industry:
Online travel services
Revenue:
US$4.36 billion in 2011
Employees:
350 in the priceline.com
business unit, 3,400
worldwide
Java version used:
JDK 6 and JDK 7
For online travel sites, however, that up-front simplicity
belies the complexity behind
the screen. At priceline.com,
for example, a simple query
sets off a complex series of
hundreds of interactions and
connections to multiple hotel,
airline, and other reservation
systems around the world,
explains Michael Diliberto, CIO
for the North America division
of the Norwalk, Connecticut–
based firm.
“We work with thousands
of suppliers and affiliates over
multiple distribution plat-
forms,” says Diliberto. “We
need to connect our system to
the appropriate supply inven-
tory, so that means direct
connections to rental car
companies such as Hertz, Avis,
Alamo—and to large global
distribution systems [GDSs]
such as Travelport or even a
smaller new GDS such as Farelogix, to get
access to the freshest inventory for hotels,
rental cars, and airline seats.”
“A search for hotel deals in New York
City can generate up to 500 simultaneous
requests to suppliers’ systems,” Diliberto
adds. Multiply that by thousands of custom-
ers querying the system simultaneously, and
it’s easy to see that the core of priceline
.com’s business is its ability to manage the
complex matrix of connections between
priceline.com’s customers and suppliers.
And the secret to making those connections
work so seamlessly and to making it all look
COMMUNITY
JAVA TECH
ABOUT US
so easy in near real time is Java. “For us, Java
has become a way of life,” says Diliberto.
“Java provides us the ability to connect with
other travel resources around the world more
effectively and efficiently.”
Priceline CIO Michael Diliberto (left)
and Vice President of Engineering
Amit Poddar discuss project status
in front of the company’s analytics
dashboards.
BEHIND THE SCREENS
Priceline.com, the online travel business that
made “Name Your Own Price” famous, is one
of the world’s leading online travel services,
offering everything from hotel rooms to
airline tickets, rental cars, vacation packages,
and even cruises. It was founded in 1997 and
a year later launched its travel services with
