CHICAGO – (July 28, 2014) – Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG), the membership association that unites the world's hospitality companies and technology innovators to solve industry challenges, announced a new effort that will generate resources to guide the rapidly growing number of hoteliers and vendors who are moving technology systems above property. This collaborative effort among hoteliers and vendors, most of whom have real-life experience migrating to the cloud, will help hotel companies minimize risk by providing guidelines to benefit hotels, hotel brands, application providers, cloud service providers and others.

Companies in many industries are moving to the cloud to gain benefits such as greater reliability, cost savings and a reduction of on-property IT support staff. In recent years, hospitality companies have been increasingly making this transition as well. However, doing so has led to many new challenges. These are often discovered only after the fact, sometimes after days of downtime for critical systems.

The HTNG Above Property Systems Workgroup will create a framework document, including a list of best practices and definitions of terms that business and technical leaders need to understand. Additional materials from the workgroup will include documentation of views among the various parties (hotels, brands, application providers, cloud service providers, etc.) on critical issues such as data ownership, security, termination rights and support. Hotels will be able to use the framework to ensure more effective interoperability between cloud-based systems, at both business (relationship and contracting) and technical levels.

The volunteer HTNG members who have committed resources to this workgroup effort include hospitality companies Delaware North Companies, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, Kempinski Hotels, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts and Senate Hospitality Group. Leading vendors and consultants also planning to contribute include Agilysys, AjonTech LLC, Cisco Systems, Eleven Wireless, Fingi, Guestware, IBM Corporation, Newmarket International, NEC Corporation, Oracle, PAR Springer-Miller Systems, Professional Accounting Solutions, Saflok, SkyTouch Technology, Sonifi Solutions, Systems Design & Development, TS&C and Xenia Hospitality Advisors.

Hotels involved in above-property system migrations can gain access to this body of work directly (if they or their brand hold HTNG memberships) or through their technology vendors or consultants. For information, interested parties can visit the workgroup's wiki page: http://wiki.htng.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Above_Property_Systems

About Hospitality Technology Next Generation (HTNG)

Part of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), HTNG the premier technology solutions association in the hospitality industry, HTNG serves members from hospitality companies, technology vendors to hospitality, consultants, media and academic experts. HTNG's members participate in focused workgroups to bring to market open solution sets addressing specific business problems. HTNG fosters the selection and adoption of existing open standards and also develops new open standards to meet the needs of the global hospitality industry.

Currently more than 400 corporate and individual members from across this spectrum, including world leading hospitality companies and technology vendors, are active HTNG participants. HTNG's Board of Governors, consisting of 22 top IT leaders from hospitality companies around the world, itself has technology responsible for over 3 million guest rooms and world-leading venues. HTNG publishes workgroup proceedings, drafts and specifications for all HTNG members as soon as they are created, encouraging rapid and broad adoption. HTNG releases specifications into the public domain as soon as they are ratified by the workgroups.

Tami Craig
HTNG | Communications Manager
+1 847 303.5560 x204
HTNG

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