PATENT OWNER
`
`PATENT OWNER
`EXHIBIT 2016
`
`EXHIBIT 201 6
`
`

`
`LOCATION:
`Washington, DC,
`United States
`
`YEAR:
`2006
`
`STATUS:
`Laureate
`
`CATEGORY:
`Business and Related Services
`
`NOMINATING COMPANY:
`EMC
`
`ThE COMPUTERwORLd
`hONORS PROGRAM
`case study
`
`ORGANIZATION:
`Marriott International, Inc.
`PROJECT NAME:
`
`Marriott International Integrated Global Reservations system and Web Presence
`
`Summary
`Marriott International, Inc. (Nyse:MaR) is a leading global lodging company that shapes and
`enables its business through an ambitious program of improvements in technology. Beginning
`in the late 1990s, Marriott realized that to be competitive and lead the future lodging market,
`it had to upgrade and fully integrate two of its most crucial systems: the Marriott automated
`Reservation system for Hotel accommodations (MaRsHa) and Marriott’s Internet technology
`platform, Marriott.com. These systems, combined with Marriott’s key business and inventory
`applications and marketing and loyalty programs, comprise a global technology infrastructure
`that facilitated more than 69.5 million new reservations in 2005, averaging over 190,000 per
`day, while maintaining availability of better than 99.99 percent. The updated infrastructure
`enabled 100 percent growth in Marriott.com sales from 2003 to 2005, logged single-day
`sales records of nearly $14 million, and led the industry in online hotel rooms sales. In fact,
`Marriott’s seamless multi-brand, multi-channel integration enables the company to offer the
`industry’s only global rate guarantee, the Look No Further® Best Rate Guarantee, stating that
`Marriott guests will always get the lowest available rate when booking through any Marriott
`channel worldwide. It is a remarkable success story, demonstrating how aligning investments
`in technology infrastructure with business vision and strategy can enable extraordinary business
`results and how Marriott leveraged its early investment in ecommerce to set new standards for
`the global lodging industry.
`
`Introductory Overview
`Marriott International, Inc. (Nyse:MaR) is a leading lodging company with more than 2,700
`properties and approximately 499,000 rooms worldwide. In 2005, Marriott relied on its inte-
`grated technology infrastructure to facilitate more than 69.5 million new reservations, an aver-
`age of over 190,000 per day, while maintaining availability of better than 99.99 percent. These
`achievements were made possible by Marriott’s ambitious, long-term program of improvements
`to ensure that technology shapes and enables the company’s business. Marriott’s agile, enter-
`prise-wide infrastructure and scalable model for rapid growth in ecommerce has solidified the
`company’s dominant market position, enabling Marriott to lead the global lodging industry in
`
`HONORING tHOse WHO use INFORMatION tecHNOLOGy tO BeNeFIt sOcIety
`
`

`
`ORGANIZATION:
`Marriott International, Inc.
`
`PROJECT NAME:
`Marriott International
`Integrated Global Reservations
`System and Web Presence
`
`LOCATION:
`Washington, DC,
`United States
`
`YEAR:
`2006
`
`STATUS:
`Laureate
`
`CATEGORY:
`Business and Related Services
`
`NOMINATING COMPANY:
`EMC
`
`ThE COMPUTERwORLd hONORS PROGRAM
`case study
`
`online hotel room sales, while maintaining the industry’s lowest cost per reservation.
`The innovations that make up Marriott’s current operating environment evolved as part of
`Marriott’s strategic planning process which began in the late 1990s. Marriott’s business and
`technology leaders realized that to be competitive and lead the future lodging market, they had
`to upgrade their Marriott automated Reservation system for Hotel accommodations (MaR-
`sHa) with state-of-the-art technologies, including open systems architecture and networking,
`high-performance storage management and business continuity capabilities. to fully utilize
`these capabilities, Marriott integrated MaRsHa with all of the company’s key business applica-
`tions and made its entire inventory available as a single image in real-time across all channels.
`This seamless multi-brand, multi-channel integration enables Marriott to offer its Look No Fur-
`ther® Best Rate Guarantee – the lodging industry’s only truly worldwide rate guarantee – stating
`that Marriott guests will always get the lowest available rate when booking through any Marriott
`channel.
`Marriott also ensured that MaRsHa’s real-time requirements could scale easily to meet the
`accelerated needs of Internet-enabled sales channels, which were presenting the company with
`look-to-book ratios of 100-to-1 or greater. By comparison, traditional reservation center chan-
`nels and global distribution systems had presented Marriott with look-to-book ratios of only
`5-to-1 and 10-to-1, respectively.
`With MaRsHa’s core technology functioning effectively by the early 2000s, Marriott took its
`reservations and marketing strategy a step further by developing an infrastructure roadmap to
`support Marriott’s overall ecommerce objectives. anticipating the Internet boom, Marriott
`was one of the first lodging companies to commit to enabling customers to conduct significant
`business online. In 2003, Marriott successfully completed an aggressive 11-month upgrade to
`its entire Internet technology architecture and operating environment, expanding Marriott.com’s
`scale, scope and functionality to enable rapid responses to changing business needs. Marriott’s
`online enhancements provided leading-edge personalization and a robust shopping experience
`for online visitors, combined with better analytical and marketing capabilities to help Marriott
`convert more of those visitors into satisfied, repeat customers. today, customers spend ap-
`proximately 1.5 million hours per month on Marriott.com, more than six times as much as they
`spend with Marriott’s reservation and customer care agents.
`Based on open-systems standards and fully-integrated with key inventory, marketing and loyalty
`programs, Marriott.com is an enterprise asset providing the public face of Marriott to its guests,
`shareholders, and current and potential associates. Between 2000 and 2005, Marriott.com’s
`gross sales grew from just over $400 million to more than $2.8 billion, representing approxi-
`mately 14 percent of Marriott’s gross revenues in 2005, and significantly outpacing industry pre-
`dictions of 25% growth in online lodging reservations. Marriott.com also delivered marketing
`emails to more than 200 million recipients throughout calendar year 2005, enhancing Marriott’s
`reach to high-value customers. even with these demanding and unpredictable workload char-
`acteristics, Marriott is regularly identified as the fastest and most reliable travel site on the Web,
`as measured by Keynote systems, a leader in e-business performance measurement and manage-
`ment services.
`Marriott’s technology infrastructure has followed a strong evolutionary growth path, with the
`groundbreaking work done on MaRsHa leading to the business processes that today drive
`traffic to Marriott.com. In this way, Marriott put itself ahead of its competitors in both sys-
`
`HONORING tHOse WHO use INFORMatION tecHNOLOGy tO BeNeFIt sOcIety
`
`

`
`ORGANIZATION:
`Marriott International, Inc.
`
`PROJECT NAME:
`Marriott International
`Integrated Global Reservations
`System and Web Presence
`
`LOCATION:
`Washington, DC,
`United States
`
`YEAR:
`2006
`
`STATUS:
`Laureate
`
`CATEGORY:
`Business and Related Services
`
`NOMINATING COMPANY:
`EMC
`
`ThE COMPUTERwORLd hONORS PROGRAM
`case study
`
`tems integration and its ability to handle large transaction volumes with 24/7 continuity. The
`result is an integrated business and technology environment that runs smoothly, efficiently and
`cost-effectively, enabling the company to achieve its distribution and customer service objectives
`consistently, and to add new hotels and brands to Marriott’s integrated global system practically
`overnight as the business grows.
`
`Benefits
`Marriott’s integrated global reservations system and Marriott.com Internet platform deliver a
`wide range of benefits for the company’s guests and corporate customers, owners and franchisees
`and associates. at the most basic level, the combination of highly scalable, available reservations
`capabilities, combined with the lodging industry’s leading Web site provides unprecedented,
`highly personalized access to Marriott’s global inventory. Marriott.com provides a central,
`self-service point for the company and for Marriott’s spirit to serve Our Guests personalization
`program. It realizes the potential of ecommerce, and does so with 18 different country sites,
`delivering content in spanish, German, Japanese, French and a variety of other local languages.
`utilizing its global footprint to greatest advantage, Marriott has strengthened its local and enter-
`prise-wide operations with agile systems that can seamlessly deliver the right information to the
`right people at the right time. The integrated infrastructure is focused on delivering value, with
`impressive results, including:
`- agility in responding to changing market conditions and future needs,
`- Improved decision-making to drive revenues and profitability,
`- enhanced relationship-building opportunities across all touch points,
`- Reduced complexity in Marriott’s computing environment,
`- consistency of information across systems,
`- enhanced security for data and transactions, and
`- shared best practices and measurement tools across the enterprise.
`Thanks to its integrated infrastructure, Marriott’s guests and corporate customers benefit from
`personalized services, delivered consistently at all locations. so that guests may connect to
`Marriott’s content, entertainment and work outlets with optimum convenience and flexibility
`“any time, anywhere,” the company provides multiple ways to interact with Marriott, whether
`online, over the phone, with a Marriott associate or using self-service tools at its properties.
`today, the company’s owners and franchisees have more options in connecting to Marriott’s
`systems to conduct business. They benefit from faster conversions, implementations and up-
`grades to both business and guest-facing systems, robust capabilities to manage multiple hotel
`operations from diverse locations, increased productivity through a stronger technology tool set
`and better intelligence about when, where and how management or staff action is needed. For
`instance, a new hotel can be added to Marriott’s MaRsHa and Marriott.com systems literally
`overnight and be available directly to the public or via Marriott’s online partners for full world-
`wide sales in a matter of days. This rapid time-to-market and powerful sales engine is one key
`factor in why owners and franchisees prefer investing in Marriott hotels. additionally, new or
`changed information about a hotel’s services, local attractions or related Internet links can be
`
`HONORING tHOse WHO use INFORMatION tecHNOLOGy tO BeNeFIt sOcIety
`
`

`
`ORGANIZATION:
`Marriott International, Inc.
`
`PROJECT NAME:
`Marriott International
`Integrated Global Reservations
`System and Web Presence
`
`LOCATION:
`Washington, DC,
`United States
`
`YEAR:
`2006
`
`STATUS:
`Laureate
`
`CATEGORY:
`Business and Related Services
`
`NOMINATING COMPANY:
`EMC
`
`ThE COMPUTERwORLd hONORS PROGRAM
`case study
`
`added directly by the hotel and be available on Marriott.com the next day. These near real-time
`capabilities ensure that guests’ expectations can be met when they arrive at any Marriott hotel.
`Marriott maintains an aggressive program to maintain or reduce its technology unit cost-per-
`reservation year over year. This focus enables Marriott’s sales and Marketing team to drive more
`profit to the bottom line. In fact, Marriott’s technology infrastructure has enabled 100 percent
`growth in sales on Marriott.com from 2003 to 2005 with single-day sales records of nearly
`$14 million. By leveraging Marriott.com’s efficient design, Marriott also has been able to keep
`technology unit costs for operating the site at less than a quarter of a percent of gross sales since
`the launch of the new platform. at the same time, the entire operational costs, in hardware,
`software, people, utilities, etc., needed to run MaRsHa are lower in 2005 than they were in
`the year 2000.
`
`The Importance of Technology
`Marriott’s integrated global reservations system and Internet platform was developed through
`the collaboration of two groups, Marriott’s technology organization (called Information Re-
`sources or IR), which is responsible for the design, development and support for all sales and
`marketing systems including MaRsHa, and the ecommerce group, which manages and sup-
`ports all of Marriott’s electronic sales and marketing channels. together, these groups deployed
`robust reservations capabilities that scale easily to meet the company’s growth targets as well as
`handle high-volume Internet traffic. Those enhancements were backed with leading-edge Web
`functionality that attracts and holds customers, enabling the Internet to generate significant
`revenues and drive customer preference. Marriott builds its success through technology agility,
`implementing a system once, and then re-purposing it successfully across the enterprise.
`MaRsHa technology
`Marriott’s MaRsHa reservation system celebrated its 21st birthday in 2005, and has set the
`standard in the lodging industry for many years, providing the lowest cost per transaction,
`highest contribution to occupancy, and highest revenue generated per call, according to chan-
`neltRaK, an independent survey. Nevertheless, by the late 1990s, MaRsHa faced rising
`infrastructure costs, deteriorating system availability, and end-of-life capacity of its central
`processor. Marriott’s ambitious growth plans and the Internet boom placed further pressure on
`the aging system. In response, the company upgraded the MaRsHa infrastructure and assets,
`and surrounded MaRsHa’s operating system with enhancements to improve scalability and
`uptime, reduce costs, and migrate to an open tcP/IP connectivity model. today, MaRsHa is
`a more powerful reservations engine than ever, supporting seamless, multi-channel booking for
`Marriott’s 2,700 properties worldwide.
`MaRsHa is more than a simple reservations processor. as a core system connecting Marriott
`to customers, partners and suppliers, MaRsHa presents the company’s global room inventory
`as a consistent, single image for sale in real-time across all channels. Hundreds of applications
`run on MaRsHa, including inventory control, sales, pricing, client data, rewards data, and
`more – basically everything needed to maintain a global reservation system. all of that takes a
`lot of horsepower, and MaRsHa uses the IBM transaction Processing Facility (tPF) operat-
`ing system, which is designed for high-volume, real-time applications. Marriott runs tPF on
`an IBM z990 mainframe server, which relies on eMc’s high-end symmetrix dMX storage for
`maximum performance. In fact, MaRsHa is now capable of handling in excess of 400 percent
`
`HONORING tHOse WHO use INFORMatION tecHNOLOGy tO BeNeFIt sOcIety
`
`

`
`ORGANIZATION:
`Marriott International, Inc.
`
`PROJECT NAME:
`Marriott International
`Integrated Global Reservations
`System and Web Presence
`
`LOCATION:
`Washington, DC,
`United States
`
`YEAR:
`2006
`
`STATUS:
`Laureate
`
`CATEGORY:
`Business and Related Services
`
`NOMINATING COMPANY:
`EMC
`
`ThE COMPUTERwORLd hONORS PROGRAM
`case study
`
`more transactions per second than it could five years ago, a significant boost to customer service
`and business profitability, with no significant increase in It-related costs.
`as the center point of booking Marriott’s business, MaRsHa must deliver 24/7 availability and
`reliability, so the company also implemented a state-of-the-art business continuity infrastructure
`to support MaRsHa. using eMc storage, software, and services, MaRsHa’s primary pro-
`duction environment is replicated to a remote hot site 200 miles away, and potential data loss in
`the event of an outage has been reduced from one day to less than a minute, with less than one
`hour needed for site-to-site failover and business resumption.
`as the mammoth MaRsHa overhaul began in 1998, Marriott rebuilt its reservations system
`to handle the explosion of transaction traffic anticipated from the Internet. This was spurred
`by Marriott’s vision that the lodging business was changing in fundamental ways. For example,
`before the Internet, a travel agent typically made a hotel booking using a terminal, a process
`that created about eight transactions for every booking. With the Internet, that ratio can be as
`high as 1,000 transactions-per-booking, meaning that MaRsHa had to be upgraded to handle
`ever-increasing traffic volumes to keep pace with online usage.
`Marriott was prepared for the increased load because of technology decisions made early. High
`performance processing and storage provides the horsepower and availability MaRsHa needs
`in today’s rapid, Web-heavy environment. MaRsHa normally processes 900 transactions per
`second, and more than 1,200 transactions per second on peak days, and yet Marriott’s cost
`per transaction has decreased. In fact, the entire operational costs needed to run MaRsHa
`were reduced – in absolute dollar terms as well as in cost per transaction – including hardware,
`software, people, utilities, etc. as a result, Marriott achieved It costs that were lower in 2005
`than they were in the year 2000, driving more profit to the bottom line. This “house profit” is
`critical for Marriott owners and franchisees, and is often a key point in convincing a property to
`fly the Marriott flag.
`Marriott.com technology
`Providing the public face of Marriott to customers, Marriott.com has become a key revenue
`generator, serving approximately six million unique visitors each month and delivering more
`than $13 million in top-line booked revenue on peak days. Marriott.com serves a diverse set of
`customers, including individual travelers, loyalty members, meeting planners, and travel agents.
`It provides online shoppers with 18 different country sites, serving content in spanish, German,
`Japanese, French, and a variety of other local languages.
`In 2003, Marriott upgraded Marriott.com’s technology architecture and operating environment
`to expand its scale, scope, and functionality to both enable Marriott’s rapid response to chang-
`ing business needs, and allow the site to better help guests personalize their connections with
`Marriott. The company worked with accenture as a systems integration partner for the Mar-
`riott.com upgrade. together, Marriott and accenture completely overhauled Marriott.com’s
`architecture in a way that was transparent to the customer, a process that’s been compared to
`“performing a heart transplant on a runner in the middle of a marathon.” In fact, the upgrade
`was completed with uninterrupted 24/7 global availability. Marriott.com runs on IBM Web-
`sphere and IBM aIX servers, supported by eMc cLaRiiON high-performance information
`storage and software, and the enhanced site now leads all travel industry sites in reliability and
`performance as measured by the Gomez Performance Indices.
`
`HONORING tHOse WHO use INFORMatION tecHNOLOGy tO BeNeFIt sOcIety
`
`

`
`ORGANIZATION:
`Marriott International, Inc.
`
`PROJECT NAME:
`Marriott International
`Integrated Global Reservations
`System and Web Presence
`
`LOCATION:
`Washington, DC,
`United States
`
`YEAR:
`2006
`
`STATUS:
`Laureate
`
`CATEGORY:
`Business and Related Services
`
`NOMINATING COMPANY:
`EMC
`
`ThE COMPUTERwORLd hONORS PROGRAM
`case study
`
`at the broadest level, Marriott.com provides a central, self-service point for the company and
`for Marriott’s spirit to serve Our Guests personalization program. It features an impressive
`range of functions, designed to “sell to customers the way they want to buy” and empower the
`customer’s online experience to reduce “shopping and dropping” before a reservation is com-
`pleted. customers now spend 1.5 million hours per month on the Web site, nearly six times
`more than on the company’s voice reservations system, as they book rooms, view virtual tours,
`and experience the site in a variety of ways.
`
`Originality
`Marriott’s integrated infrastructure continues to set the standard in the lodging industry. MaR-
`sHa was the first totally integrated global reservations system, delivering seamless, multi-chan-
`nel booking for Marriott’s properties worldwide. It provides key support for Marriott’s strategic
`objectives of single image inventory and global rate integrity, enabling quick sales and marketing
`response to changing business conditions.
`In 2003, Marriott’s sales and marketing leaders identified a hospitality industry first-mover
`opportunity to strengthen customer preference by guaranteeing the best available Marriott
`room rate regardless of booking channel. to achieve this goal, Marriott Information Resources
`partnered with sales and marketing to support pricing analysis, consistent multi-channel infor-
`mation delivery, and a new incentive model for travel industry partners. using MaRsHa and
`Marriott.com’s new capabilities, Marriott successfully launched the Look No Further® Best Rate
`Guarantee program in January 2004. Marriott’s guarantee ensures customers the best available
`room rate regardless of whether they call a Marriott Reservation center or hotel directly, buy
`through Marriott.com or via an online intermediary (expedia, travelocity, etc.), or purchase
`through traditional travel agencies. The program’s success was immediate. Only five weeks
`after the Look No Further® Best Rate Guarantee was launched, customers on Marriott.com who
`knew about it were two times as likely to book a room as those who did not.
`With this initiative, Marriott became the only major lodging company to make a best rate guar-
`antee across all customer segments and channels. The Look No Further® Best Rate Guarantee
`program enhances Marriott’s status with individual travelers and strengthens preference with
`travel agencies, global reservations systems, travel management companies, and e-intermediaries,
`which all have the same access to Marriott’s best available rates.
`
`Success
`In discussing the success of Marriott’s integrated MaRsHa reservations system and Marriott.
`com Internet solution, the numbers tell the story. to serve more than 2,700 properties and
`more than 499,000 rooms worldwide, this infrastructure enabled Marriott to:
`- Book 69.5 million new reservations in 2005, averaging over 190,000 per day or more than
`$100 million on peak days,
`- Maintain availability of better than 99.99 percent in 2005,
`- enable 100 percent growth in sales from 2003 to 2005, logging single-day sales records of
`nearly 14 million,
`- Lead the industry in online hotel room sales, booking more than $2.8 billion online for 2005,
`
`HONORING tHOse WHO use INFORMatION tecHNOLOGy tO BeNeFIt sOcIety
`
`

`
`ORGANIZATION:
`Marriott International, Inc.
`
`PROJECT NAME:
`Marriott International
`Integrated Global Reservations
`System and Web Presence
`
`LOCATION:
`Washington, DC,
`United States
`
`YEAR:
`2006
`
`STATUS:
`Laureate
`
`CATEGORY:
`Business and Related Services
`
`NOMINATING COMPANY:
`EMC
`
`ThE COMPUTERwORLd hONORS PROGRAM
`case study
`
`which represented 24 percent of Marriott’s total revenue,
`- upgrade both MaRsHa and Marriott.com with leading-edge scalability to support both cur-
`rent and future transaction volumes, and the systems have performed without data loss even as
`transactions have grown 400 percent over five years,
`- Increase customer time spent on the Marriott.com site 40 percent since 2004 – guests now
`spend 1.5 million hours per month on the Web site, nearly six times more than they spend on
`Marriott’s voice reservations system,
`- Increase reservations transaction processing capacity by 600 percent in five years, while sup-
`porting 30 percent more hotel inventory,
`- Process 900 transactions per second and more than 1,200 transactions per second on peak
`days with MaRsHa, and yet Marriott’s cost per reservation has decreased, and
`- Reduce the entire operational costs needed to run MaRsHa – in absolute dollar terms as well
`as in cost per transaction – including hardware, software, people, utilities, etc. This enabled
`Marriott to achieve costs for these systems that were lower in 2005 than they were in the year
`2000, driving more profit to the bottom line.
`With MaRsHa’s agile design, Marriott has achieved the industry’s lowest cost per reservation.
`In fact, MaRsHa is consistently regarded as the “Industry Low cost Leader” by channel-
`tRaK, an independent survey, which reported that MaRsHa delivers the lowest:
`- cost as a Percent of Revenue Booked,
`- total Variable cost per Gross Reservation,
`- Variable cost per Gross Voice Reservation,
`- Variable cost per Gross electronic Reservation, and
`- Highest Gross call conversion Rate.
`In addition to leading the industry in total online hotel room sales, the enhanced Marriott.
`com Web presence is regularly identified as the fastest and most reliable travel site, as mea-
`sured by Keynote systems, and leads all travel industry sites in reliability and performance as
`measured by the Gomez Performance Indices. It also has won numerous awards. Marriott’s
`Preferred travel agent site was named “Webby Worthy” in 2005 as part of the sixth annual
`Webby awards. also in 2005, the customer Respect Group analyzed 464 major corporate Web
`sites to determine online privacy trends, and ranked Marriott among the top 10 companies for
`Web privacy. In addition to being named the best hotel company for its treatment of online
`customers, in 2004 Marriott.com was the first hotel site to receive the Better Business Bureau’s
`BBBOnLine Privacy seal.
`Finally, as another measure of success with both consumers and business partners, Marriott’s
`seamless multi-brand, multi-channel integration enables the company to offer the industry’s
`only global rate guarantee, the Look No Further® Best Rate Guarantee.
`
`HONORING tHOse WHO use INFORMatION tecHNOLOGy tO BeNeFIt sOcIety
`
`

`
`ThE COMPUTERwORLd hONORS PROGRAM
`case study
`
`ORGANIZATION:
`Marriott International, Inc.
`
`PROJECT NAME:
`Marriott International
`Integrated Global Reservations
`System and Web Presence
`
`LOCATION:
`Washington, DC,
`United States
`
`YEAR:
`2006
`
`STATUS:
`Laureate
`
`CATEGORY:
`Business and Related Services
`
`NOMINATING COMPANY:
`EMC
`
`difficulty
`Because Marriott involves representatives from every part of the company in all new initiatives
`from the very beginning, the company is spared many of the “growing pains” typically found
`when implementing large, global infrastructure projects. The company’s business and market-
`ing managers are technologically fluent and worked closely with the Information Resources and
`ecommerce departments throughout the process of upgrading and integrating the reservations
`system and Web presence. There were, however, two key challenges Marriott faced in its MaR-
`sHa and Marriott.com implementations: availability and scalability.
`Knowing that Marriott solutions have to be developed, implemented and rolled-out in a 24/7
`global business environment, extra attention was paid to maintaining the reliability and avail-
`ability of ongoing operations. This was a critical factor in the MaRsHa upgrade, since the
`reservations system is literally the life’s blood of the company. Marriott also upgraded both
`MaRsHa and Marriott.com with leading-edge scalability to support both current and future
`transaction volumes, and the systems have performed without data loss even as transactions
`have grown 400 percent over five years. Marriott’s early commitment to high-performance
`processing, scalable storage and business continuity made the transition to an integrated reserva-
`tions/Web solution error-free.
`Marriott also took great care in test and development before moving new functionality into
`the global production environment. eMc’s advanced business continuity software supports
`the company’s robust testing capabilities, providing an up-to-date replicated copy of the MaR-
`sHa production environment, which facilitates quality assurance, testing and development,
`without introducing any production performance degradation. Marriott also creates business
`continuance volumes (BcVs) from the replicated production data, which are used by develop-
`ers, for example, to test database applications without affecting either the production or main
`test systems. The BcVs enable the creation of more robust development environments, better
`developer throughput, and the ability to go beyond normal functional testing to bring complex
`test environments to production and ultimately to market more quickly.
`
`HONORING tHOse WHO use INFORMatION tecHNOLOGy tO BeNeFIt sOcIety