No-go zones

Few people get to venture as deep into this sensitive data centre as I am today. In fact only 20 of the near-600 staff at Erding have an access-all-areas pass. Every employee has a different access profile that restricts where they can go. Even the boss, European vice-president global operations Wolfgang Krips, cannot just walk anywhere he wants to within the data centre.

Krips tells me that there have been problems in the past. Last summer flight bookings were disrupted for almost two hours when the “leap second” (where an extra second was added to the world clock to account for the slowing rotation of the earth) caused a bug in Amadeus’s airline reservation system. This confused web servers around the world and forced panicking airline staff to switch to manual check-ins.

“We lost 25% of our infrastructure, which had a significant impact on our customers, but we reacted very quickly,” says Krips. “We are constantly looking at ways to make our processes and technology more robust, such as introducing more automation. We know the impact on our customers if our systems fail.”

Indeed, Amadeus is judged by how it responds to such difficulties and how it reassures its customers that their data and its systems are secure. A fear that customers might lose confidence is why security is so tight and why back-up procedures are so vigorous. Business continuation is crucial for Amadeus and its clients and there are several generators and cooling machines, for example, ready to power into action if needed.

Krips describes his engineers as the most important people in the company. So thorough is the recruitment process to attract the right skills that workers come from all over the world. There are 51 nationalities represented at Erding and the official language is English.
Our guide is pleasant and knowledgeable, but watchful of his guest. As a journalist I am tempted to sneak into areas marked private and to take photos of objects I shouldn’t. I am quickly banned from taking a snap of the large iron door and turnstile we are led through on our way to the data centre’s most sensitive areas.

Once inside the data centre itself (in fact, three individual centres under one roof) I see the first of 6,500 buzzing servers that handle 26,000 travel transactions, bookings and check-ins every second.

I immediately sense the temperature drop, thanks to the cooling systems that ensure the servers do not overheat.

The rooms are spacious and airy but the environment is clinical.

It is hard to believe that what goes on in this impersonal building makes holiday dreams come true for millions of travellers.

Round the clock

Amadeus never sleeps. Its “follow-the-sun” approach means that when German staff go home, their colleagues in Miami take over. When both are in bed, Sydney steps up.

This is why when I tour the centre at 6pm only two staff out of the usual 15 are working in the Operations Bridge (which looks rather like the bridge from Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise). This is the data centre’s brain and as I manage to negotiate a picture of me sitting at the main central control desk I mischievously think what might happen if I press a flashing button. I resist the urge.

Clinical as it may be, the big data work going on inside this building is already helping travel sellers and buyers make better decisions, to be more innovative and to boost customer loyalty so everyone ultimately makes more money.

As I exit the data centre I feel like I have emerged from a sci-fi theme park ride. I am given back my passport and allowed to leave, watched closely by security.

The numbers

• The data centre handles 26,000 travel transaction, bookings and check-ins every second at peak times and 95% of the world’s scheduled network airline seats
• 6,500 servers in six rooms
• 1.6 billion transactions a day
• Two cooling machines and onsite water supply
• Three transformers and four uninterrupted power supplies
• Connecting customers to more than 200 global markets