Modernizing VIA Rail’s online ticketing platform for greater scalability

Supporting Canada's national passenger rail service

VIA Rail is Canada's only national passenger rail transport provider, and offers passenger rail service from the Atlantic Provinces all the way to the Pacific Coast, with the Quebec City to Windsor corridor accounting for more than 90% of the passengers and 75% of VIA’s revenues. For some communities, the company's trains are an essential service, providing the only available transport in and out of outlying areas. VIA Rail relies on revenue generated through ticket sales, and as a Crown Corporation, also receives funding from the Canadian Federal Government.

VIA Rail's modernization opportunity

In 2017, VIA Rail started laying the groundwork for a large modernization initiative of their core ticketing system. The maintenance and evolution of the existing platform was becoming challenging, and scalable performance to handle peak demand was required in order to provide optimal customer experience.

As a core business function, ticketing has a direct impact on revenue generation, so ensuring a seamless and engaging first step online is a critical element in enticing travellers, many of whom could consider other modes of transportation, to choose the train. With many competing options, online reservation and ticketing processes must be efficient, pleasant and trouble-free. This is of particular importance during peak travel periods, when the solution has to be scalable and flexible enough to handle instantaneous peaks in demand, and operate with little to no downtime. VIA Rail is also required to meet strict privacy protocols and laws.

CGI employs AWS Cloud solutions

After thorough analysis and discussions with the VIA Rail team, it was clear that AWS Cloud computing technology provided the most effective solution to meet the transportation company’s needs. Aware of the value of cloud technology, they wanted a roadmap to implement a best-in-class approach to their new ticketing system. Working with CGI's IT architects, engineers, and domain-specific consultants, the client implemented a full roster of AWS Cloud services to create a reliable and flexible online ticketing system.

CGI assembled an easily scalable microservices architecture built around 32 services using AWS's lightweight API gateways. These autonomous and specialized systems were agile, flexible and easy to deploy. VIA Rail also used Kubernetes, an open-source software that allows for the deployment and management of containerized applications at scale, to manage clusters of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) compute instances. This was implemented on a full roster of AWS Lambda, AWS’s serverless, event-driven compute service.

CGI uses AWS to improve the scalability and flexibility of VIA Rail ticketing platform

Using AWS Cloud technology, CGI was able to create a scalable, flexible and stable platform for VIA Rail's online ticketing system. Speed to market has been one of the key advantages, shortening the time required to upgrade or modify processes from months to weeks and sometimes days. Not only does the new architecture provide a better and faster user experience for passengers reserving and buying tickets, but it also seamlessly scales up to meet peaks in demand.