HP helps in IRCTC's digital journey

NEW DELHI, INDIA: To ramp up its digital initiatives, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), is updating its IT architecture.

It is adding five new HP Itanium servers in the middle layer of the Passenger Reservation System (PRS), taking the total tally of the servers in the PRS to 10, , said IRCTC Chairman and MD Dr A K Manocha.

The initiative to acquire the new servers comes close on the heels of IRCTC introducing two new high-speed servers earlier this month that have doubled peak-time efficiency for booking Tatkal tickets in the morning hours.

IRCTC is also planning to increase its network bandwidth from the existing 1.4 GB to 1.7 GB in order to enhance the performance of e-ticketing operations.

While the move is chiefly seen as an initiative to speed up e-ticketing operations, IRCTC believes that it will also help streamline the Next Generation E-Ticketing System (NGET). “The entire procedure of e-ticketing will get a facelift with improvement in website’s efficiency, log-in time and payment gateway,” said M Srinivas MS, Addl. GM (Software), IRCTC.

According to IRCTC, the new servers which are in the process of being installed will play a very vital role considering that 54 percent train tickets in the country are booked through its website.

The average daily sale of train tickets through the portal, which is the world’s second busiest with 3 crore registered users, is around 5.5 to 6 lakh. It has registered a record 14,800 tickets per minute.

With the introduction of five new servers, the number of concurrent users will go up from the existing 180,000 to 300,000 while the existing capacity to book around 15,000 tickets per minute will go up considerably, he pointed out.

Earlier on June 1, IRCTC had installed two Linux-enabled servers, substantially raising the booking capacity of e-tickets, much to the relief of passengers jostling for tatkal reservation which faces heavy rush in its first 15 minutes since 10 am when the service opens every day.