Gulf Air has smooth flight into Cloud

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As they push back their seats and settle down to watch live coverage of the Manchester derby in the Premiership, few passengers of Gulf Air will realise they are part of a technological revolution within the airline.

   But, as the airline’s IT director Dr Hassim Jaji Hassim recently told the audience at this year’s Cloud Expo Europe, if it is to compete in the modern world it needs to offer enhanced customer eServices in areas such as check-ins, bookings and in flight entertainment to make a difference.  So over the last few years it has been investing in a private cloud to bring flexibility, scalability and lower costs to its IT.

   The cloud is a means of delivering computing power as a service rather than as a product and is usually paid for on a metered basis.  It also offers scalability on demand and is most commonly seen in Internet based applications.  In a private cloud, however, the technological infrastructure is operated solely for the one company.

   Dr Hassim said Gulf Air was one of the first airlines to go to the cloud.  While it has reduced both existing IT and management costs and helped the company avoid some previously inevitable future costs, the biggest driver of the programme and where the biggest benefits have come were in “being able to meet the demands of the rapid growth of the business.”

   Gulf Air has gradually moved its 170 interlinked legacy applications onto a private cloud without disruption to the service but not for the sake of the technology.  “This is about meeting the requirements of our business strategy,” he said “and being able to do it smoothly while enhancing the reliability and availability of our IT services.”

   He said: “Previously to meet business user demands for new services it could take months to organise hardware and software and by then you have lost your competitive edge with the other airlines in the region – now we can get it done in a matter of days.”  This has lead to new in flight services such as mobile phones, Wi Fi and, of course, being the first airline to show live Premiership football being introduced on to its planes.
“We want to take care of our passengers on their journey from when they are sitting at home thinking of travelling to book, to find a hotel, check-in, the flight, and the arrival,” he said.  “Every stage of that journey is very important to us.”

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Over 4500 technology decision makers attended Cloud Expo Europe which is expected to be even bigger in 2013 when it runs 29th & 30th January.