Building airports in the Cloud
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Looking at the future of travel has me thinking back to my years as a pilot.
When I was in that plane, it was me at the controls as I soared into the sky. Even if it wasn’t quite like “Top Gun”, the rush I felt was hard to beat. But I never let myself forget that no mission could be successful without the entire team being connected and working with a shared purpose.
Airlines, airports and travel companies have become better at sharing information and being connected, but now it’s time to soar into the future by putting our systems into the Cloud.
Common Use platforms, on which all passenger processing can take place, have been part of our industry for 30 years but haven’t quite kept up with the times. That has left us with different systems in different places and bulky hardware that takes up precious space at airports.
Keeping the on-site hardware running and up-to-date takes time, people and money, eating into already slim margins in today’s hyper-competitive environment.
Cloud computing offers us a solution
Many critical industries such as banks, stock exchanges and even airlines have already embraced the benefits of using remote servers to store and manage data. For airports, moving to the Cloud will mean cutting away the infrastructure burden so they can focus on what really matters – customer service and innovation.
The result will be a smoother and truly unified system that transforms the travel experience for passengers.
What about reliability, security and privacy?
There are a lot of myths surrounding the challenges switching to the cloud in the airport industry, but they are slowly being dispelled. Cloud providers have made resilience a top priority and big data centres feature multiple back-ups and on-site staff that significantly limit the impact of an outage. System upgrades and software updates are done at the source and shared with everyone quickly rather than having to rely on the time-consuming and piecemeal methods that some providers still use.
Firewalls, security codes and encryption cut the risk of a breach, while having dedicated staff with Cloud expertise keeps the data centres on top of threats and the network secure. That takes the pressure off airports, allowing their IT people to focus on strategic solutions rather than infrastructure.
There is also a big difference between public Cloud services from the likes of Google and the private Cloud systems being used by many companies to handle critical elements of their businesses.
Moving to the cloud
Migrating to a Cloud-based system will no doubt require careful planning and coordination, but it can be fairly quick and inexpensive. The system needs to be set up only once and the cost of a connection to a central data centre is a fraction of what it takes to maintain a back room full of computers.
The best part is that the Cloud can be used from any location, turning our dreams for Common Use technology into reality so we can focus on the most important part of our business – keeping travellers happy with top-notch service.
To download a copy of the latest airport IT insight paper from Amadeus, visit the Amadeus airport solutions LinkedIn page here or visit the blog here.
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