In no surprise to anyone - Sabre has announced that its next generation agent tool will be multi-GDS. Thus making all 3 legacy GDS companies now offering to link to each others' hosts.

This marks a full entry of the GDS players into the agent desktop market. AmadeusOne followed Galileo's as yet undeployed Universal Desktop. The new Sabre tool will ultimately replace MySabre.

The new tool is described as a "merchandising platform" in a clear nod to the importance that merchandising will play in the future of travel agent tools.

There will be quite an interesting battle now emerging from the traditional players as they try to figure out how to develop hybrid functionality to access not just basic GDS host based functions but remote XML and even EDIFACT based services. In what must now be an admission that the days of host centric computing are over for the GDS world - the services are going to come from a wide array of sources.

For the IPO bound GDSs the investment in technology to catch up to the rest of the world in computing capability will be significant. How this will be paid for remains an open question.

Next generation products from companies like Farelogix and LUTE Technologies are already beginning to appear in the market place.

Cheers
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