On the picture you can see a part of their "server room". There is mostly only network equipment left because everything is migrating over to cloud platforms.
Today I had the chance to visit one of the biggest hotel chains in Croatia and I got a tour of their HQ (its super nice) and had a talk with the director of IT. I learned a ton on how complex hotel IT systems actually work. There is CRM (Consumer Relations Management), PRM (Partner Relations Management), and a ton of other things I totally didn't forget.
I really didn't think there was much in hotels except Booking.com and someone accepting that reservation, but I learned that there is a whole system behind reservations, sales, managing purchases, managing partners (for e.g. maintenance of other systems, or even just mowing the grass).
I also had a discussion on if it is worth to keep managing internal infrastructure or if it is better to move everything over to Azure and other cloud platforms.
Essentialy their systems are very complicated but very neatly engineered in a way that there is security but that it is still usable. MFA is neatly implemented in every way you can imagine. Partner relations are also done via VPN and such. There are a lot of other things but I'm not sure it I can talk about them without disclosing the company.
In essence, I learned that there is a ton of components in managing a big hotel chain. There are many departments doing many things and that it's definitely a hard job to manage all of that.
And a big thank you to the company for allowing me to come over :)
This was Day 3 of #100DaysToOffload