In line with the Kingdom’s cloud first policy, Gulf Air, the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain, has collaborated with Amazon Web Services (AWS). It will deliver a resilient infrastructure to handle the transition of the core IT systems from the airline’s headquarters to the AWS cloud solution which will be used in the unlikely case of emergencies and operational disruptions.
Accordingly, for the first time in the national carrier’s history, and as part of its Business Continuity Management System, Gulf Air has successfully accomplished a disaster recovery simulation exercise of failing over the Core IT systems hosted at Gulf Air’s on-premise Data Center to AWS Cloud, proceeding with performing normal operations, then failback to Gulf Air’s on-premise Data Center with no interruption to the airline’s operations.
The exercise was conducted by adopting a hybrid model of “Work Remotely” and “Work from Office”, as various business functions were involved in this exercise, including the Aircraft Maintenance Control Center (MCC), Engineering, Planning, Material, Records, Quality Assurance, Integrated Operations Center (IOC), Flight Dispatch, Crew Control, Airport Support Unit (ASU), Central Reservation Center (CRC), Finance, Human Resource (HR), and Information Technology.
Upon the successful completion of the exercise, Gulf Air Chief Executive Officer Captain Waleed Al Alawi received Business Continuity Committee Chairperson and Chief Technical Officer of Gulf Air Mr. Jamal Hashim. Captain Al Alawi thanked the Business Continuity committee and all Recovery Team members for this great milestone achievement, as he emphasized on the importance of such tests to ensure the airline’s readiness to various incidents on its path to digital maturity.
The announcement falls in line with the airline’s growing ambition to accelerate its digital transformation journey by way of adopting competitive digital solutions across the board. The collaboration with AWS not only ensures fail-proof business continuity but will concur long-term resilience in all operational development head-on. In addition, Gulf Air’s engagement with AWS marks a milestone in the airline’s long-term digital transformation journey, leveraging AWS’s cloud solutions.
