Now Streaming on DevOps Radio: Jacob Tomaw Talks About How Orbitz Transformed Software Delivery

Blog co-authored by Sarah Grucza, PAN Communications

Have you ever booked a trip through the Orbitz  website? Orbitz Worldwide, now a part of the Expedia family, is a leading global online travel company. If you’ve ever booked travel through the Orbitz website you can easily understand how Orbitz Worldwide sells ten of billions of dollars in travel annually. The Orbitz and Expedia brands use software to transform the way consumers around the world plan and purchase travel. The practice of direct booking online travel has disrupted the travel industry, and that industry innovation attracted Jacob Tomaw, principal engineer, to the company in 2006.

Jacob was in search of a company where technology was the business - and he found that in Orbitz. When Jacob joined the Orbitz team, he not only knew how important software was to Orbitz’s business, he quickly saw that there were ways to improve on current software delivery practices. Through a series of project and group transformations, Jacob began to implement agile, continuous delivery (CD) and DevOps practices throughout Orbitz. Since joining the company, the software delivery teams have achieved impressive results, including reducing release cycles by more than 75 percent, learning to value a team-oriented culture and enhancing user experience.   

DevOps Radio host Andre Pino wanted to learn more about Jacob and find out what it was like navigating through this transformation, so they sat down to talk. You can listen in on Jacob and Andre’s conversation in the latest episode of DevOps Radio .

In this latest DevOps Radio episode, Jacob covers how he got his start in software delivery and his experiences at Orbitz. He then talks through the transformation the software delivery teams at Orbitz went through. You’ll also get a look into the mind of a technology expert; Jacob explores thoughts on the future and on open source software.

Plug in your headphones and tune into the latest episode of DevOps Radio. Available on the CloudBees website and on iTunes. Join the conversation about the episode on Twitter by tweeting out to @CloudBees and including #DevOpsRadio in your post!

Listen to the podcast. If you still want to learn more about the Orbitz transformation, read the case study  or watch the video (below), featuring Jacob and his team.