Aviation will clearly use cloud computing as a key building block of its technologically enabled future, but how should airlines integrate it into their operations and tech stack? Should they roll their own systems, bring in consultants as a change programme, work with an as-a-service managed cloud provider… or something else?
A first question for any airline is whether to develop this capability inhouse or whether to look outside the company for it. The external market includes a variety of models, and sometimes a combination of multiple models:
- engaging expertise directly as semi-inhouse consultants, either as a discrete project or as a wider programme of developing the expertise
- engaging external expertise as a setup project, but doing ongoing operations, maintenance and development inhouse — or, more rarely, vice versa
- engaging a provider externally, either to operate a specific system as a project or as an externally provided as-a-Service model, often called managed cloud services
The last model — the as-a-Service (aaS) or managed cloud services model — has been particularly popular among airlines recently, particularly those smaller, niche or boutique carriers that may not have cloud capability internally as a staffing resource focus.
“Managed cloud services are services that offer partial or complete management of a client’s cloud resources or infrastructure,” Steffen Wagner, head of the technology centre of excellence at Lufthansa Systems, a subsidiary of the wider Lufthansa Group, tells us. “Management responsibilities can include migration, configuration, optimisation, security, and maintenance. These services are designed to enable organisations to maximise benefits from cloud services while minimising internal time and costs.”
Within the aviation context in particular, there is a desire to speed up migration to cloud infrastructure in order to realise early benefits of this technology, so some airlines and other actors within the industry are also seeking external assistance from providers to accelerate the process beyond a pace that they could otherwise achieve.
“Many airlines are using managed cloud services as they are migrating their IT infrastructure to the cloud. We at Lufthansa Systems developed our Global Aviation Cloud, GAC, as a managed cloud service that includes our application portfolio,” Wagner says. “Its future-proof deployment model allows airlines to focus on their core business and quickly adapt to dynamic business requirements.”
These business requirements are at the very core of aviation, where airlines, airports and many other parts of the industry have a mission critical technology stack with always-on, 24/7 services.
“Every day, airlines around the world face the challenge of having to respond quickly to unforeseen events in order to minimise their impact on overall flight operations,” Wagner says. “The flight planning area is the most important IT application in the event of a malfunction or breakdown. The multi-cloud approach offers two key benefits to airlines: critical revenue impacting applications such as flight planning can be deployed across multiple clouds with active workloads and disaster recovery. This creates redundancy in case of complete outages on one cloud provider.”
Wagner highlights that a “second benefit is the availability of applications in different regions across different cloud providers that can help effectively meet compliance, regulatory and governance requirements. This allows airlines to concentrate on their core business processes — within a modern and stable IT infrastructure with only one central point of contact.”
This is, of course, particularly helpful for larger global carriers whose networks cover countries (or, in the notable case of the European Union, regions) with strong or unusual data protection requirements, Internet restrictions, or other peculiarities.
Aviation industry expertise plus tech industry innovation is a persuasive formula
A key question for any company within the aviation industry looking to move all or part of their IT operations to the cloud is whether to turn to one of the trusted industry names in technology provision, a tech industry powerhouse, or a new startup company. There are many factors within this decision, including geographical location, network vs point-to-point system, number or diversity of destinations, full-service vs low-cost model, its unique mixture of legacy IT systems, previous cloud moves, and more.
Wagner explains that Lufthansa Systems’ model is to blend both aviation knowledge with tech industry scope and scale. “GAC is powered by two of the most respected cloud providers in the industry, Microsoft and Google. Their Azure and GCP [Google Cloud Platform] offerings lay the foundations of what became our GAC.”
As part of this model, Lufthansa Systems sets up the base-level Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) components that are required for the applications it then offers to be installed on top of them.
“This works through a set of centralised services that comply with both aviation data protection regulations as well as the current security standards and requirements,” Wagner says. “All 24/7 cloud operation tasks follow the same standards and processes as the application-related operations units.”
Indeed, security is always a concern within aviation, and Wagner highlights that “Lufthansa Systems’ GAC was developed specifically for the needs and security standards of airlines. The GAC offers a complete service from a single source while also including hosting and the necessary infrastructure. Its technical structure is based on the combination of the various cloud environments of different providers, a so-called multi-cloud approach. This requires close cooperation with strategic partners in order to offer customers the best possible user experience and to ensure maximum security and resilience by combining the strengths of the different clouds. The collaboration enables the deployment of IT solutions in a global delivery model with end-to-end responsibility in a secure cloud environment.”
Working within the Azure and GCP environment also enables other technologies, developed either specifically for aviation or elsewhere with sufficient read-across.
“Key cloud-native enablement concerns like Identity Access Management, Networking, Observability and Container Orchestration are served through additional technology stacks as part of GAC internal platform offerings,” Wagner says. “This also allows the GAC to benefit from a more seamless multi-cloud experience as well as ensuring flexibility in addressing B2B integration like with GAC’s federated approach to identity management using Okta behind the curtains.”
One of the most persuasive aspects of moving IT to the cloud is the potential for upgrades, and here managed cloud providers keep their eyes on emerging technologies, whether those deployed by the upstream wholesale cloud providers, by aviation systems with interfacing APIs, or those they themselves can deploy onto the cloud.
“Some parts of Lufthansa Systems’ product portfolio leverage AI already as of today,” Wagner concludes, citing the company’s latest AI-enabled automated operations control centre assistant within its NetLine operations management system as an example. This, he says, “uses AI to derive targeted actionable recommendations for flight operations. We can be sure to expect that more sophisticated AI models will further improve the way Lufthansa Systems and its GAC interact with and help our customers on a day-to-day basis.”
Author: John Walton
Published 03 August 2023
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