Background

As a result of a long-standing relationship with Stagecoach, kraya has been involved in developing and maintaining their websites and branding since the inception of Megabus in 2003. Megabus has grown from being a small project between a few towns and cities in the UK, to being one of the main low price bus companies in both the UK and the US, and has, in effect, forced other bus companies to take stock of the situation and provide similarly conceived brands of their own.  The Megabus operations currently involve high demand e-commerce transactions which require 24x7 services with massive reliability and scalability. Over the years kraya has continued to build on the functionality and performance of their sites to meet the ever-growing demands of the expanding Megabus business.  kraya used a range of its areas of expertise in order to provide a complete and integrated solution for Stagecoach.

What We Did

krayamatics was initially briefed with building a complex load based pricing engine for what was then a fledgling project with a very low budget.

At the moment, krayamatics is working on a complete revamp of the architecture, looking ahead at the massive rate of growth that Megabus is experiencing, to be able to cope with demand in the next 10 years.  Whilst taking many processes from the original system, the new project is an enterprise level application, taking a whole new look at the approaches and needs of Stagecoach, for whom Megabus is no longer a small experiment in their transport network.

krayanet has successfully analysed and dimensioned Megabus needs.  The infrastructure deploys a number of failsafe, parallel, clustering and scaling technologies to ensure full support of the booking system.

krayativity has been involved with Stagecoach for many years, producing many forms of print and web media for the company. When the Megabus project was proposed, one of the elements to be considered was the creation of an icon that would be recognised anywhere. Sid, the 'fat bus controller' was created, and it has proven to be one of the most talked about elements of the Megabus brand. A bit like marmite, he is either loved or hated, with many social networks and forums even having specific pages dedicated to the infamous icon.

Results

The original system exceeded any expectations that the client had, and Megabus grew from a small concept to one of the major facets of Stagecoach's transport business. Over the years, the architecture was optimised, and many new features were added, and despite the increased complexity and feature-set, it still is perfectly comfortable dealing with hundreds of thousands of visitors and selling tens of thousands of tickets a day. With a dynamic load based pricing system requiring a vast amount of calculations for every single price returned to the end user, it is of high commendation to the original design, that after more than 5 years, it has scaled so competently.