What is MARSHA
#16
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Some place in this wonderful world (usually at 39,000 ft in seat 1C)
Programs: CO Gold Elite / NW Gold Elite
Posts: 13,747
Oh gosh...I had a friend on that team...this will bug me and I'm sure I'll wake at 2am and scream out the name of that silly thing.....but that project was killed years before MARSHA III was even discussed...but without that project MARSHA III was needed shortly down the road....and how times have changed...Bill made the comment on either CNN or ABC nightline within the past 60 days that there were 1300 HQ based IR employees...I can remember there being only a few hundred...that's after outsourcing desktop support to Unisys
#17
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: check swarm
Programs: DL DM & 2MM, SPG/Bonvoid LT Titanium, Hyatt Globalist, $tarbucks Titanium
Posts: 14,404
Is there anyone who thinks that MARSHA is still a good or better system than what Starwood was using?
I thought this was an interesting statement:
When Marriott announced its interest in acquiring Starwood, one would have believed that they factored in a $500 million Starwood IP technology value within their $13.6 Billion offer, and that they would have been salivating at the prospect of having their hands on the fruits of the multi-year transformation experience this IP represented. After all, while stable as a rock, Marriott’s own system today centers around 1970’s Mainframe TPF technology (MARSHA) suitably kept current via the judicious use of the scotch-tape and wires represented by a cornucopia of front-end gateways and the labor intense support of inflexible legacy code, eclectic data bases, hard-coded interfaces, and a veritable zoo of different property management systems crying for better integration.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/marri...srael-del-rio/
I thought this was an interesting statement:
When Marriott announced its interest in acquiring Starwood, one would have believed that they factored in a $500 million Starwood IP technology value within their $13.6 Billion offer, and that they would have been salivating at the prospect of having their hands on the fruits of the multi-year transformation experience this IP represented. After all, while stable as a rock, Marriott’s own system today centers around 1970’s Mainframe TPF technology (MARSHA) suitably kept current via the judicious use of the scotch-tape and wires represented by a cornucopia of front-end gateways and the labor intense support of inflexible legacy code, eclectic data bases, hard-coded interfaces, and a veritable zoo of different property management systems crying for better integration.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/marri...srael-del-rio/
#18
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Toronto
Programs: UA 1K, AC MM E75, Marriott LT Ti, IHG Dia Amb, Hyatt Glob
Posts: 15,521
There are some Marriott fanboys here though who say it’s great IT because it’s cloud based.
As far as I’m concerned, Marriott’s garbage IT is the single most important reason why this merger was such a failure. And mgmt doesn’t appear to have a clue as to what’s going on.
#19
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: Somewhere
Posts: 1,230
As someone that worked in the industry I'm familiar with Marsha and can vouch the systems is outdated legacy garbage
#20
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Charleston, SC, USA
Programs: Avis Pref+, Hyatt Explorist, Marriott Life Gold, Honors Silver, IHG Plat via MC.
Posts: 6,786
"Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!"--Jan Brady. Or Marcia?
#21
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Somewhere in Florida
Posts: 2,620
Actually, it was the Starwood IT guys who said their system was superior because it was cloud-based. Marriott came into the merger with their legacy mainframe system and decided to move to a cloud-based system rather than invest in new hardware and software to handle the additional load from the Starwood merger. It was also Starwood's cloud-based systems which had the data breach.
As far as I’m concerned, Marriott’s garbage IT is the single most important reason why this merger was such a failure. And mgmt doesn’t appear to have a clue as to what’s going on.