IATA pilots next-generation airline standards with DevOps and AWS

Going leaner — scaling down to scale up

After conducting an architectural review of AWS with the support of Rackspace Technology, IATA was able to confirm that legacy applications were blocking its digital transformation. In addition, IATA wasn’t utilizing many of AWS’s best features, which could support its goal of streamlining activities, removing complexity and ensuring it could deliver maximum value with minimum resources — in other words, become leaner.

“The review highlighted that we weren’t leveraging new technologies and services like containers and serverless,” said Buchner. “This finding alone demonstrated to us the value of working with Rackspace Technology — to see where the gaps were and identify some quick wins to deliver savings, simplicity and increased automation.”

While embarking on this transformation, IATA also needed to lower its operational costs to accommodate the reduction in business operations. To help achieve the savings, Rackspace Technology moved the company to Rackspace Service Blocks, a flexible cloud services consumption model that enables IATA to select the services it needs at different stages in its cloud journey. As a result, IATA now also has access to CloudHealth by VMware®, which provides complete visibility into all of its cloud platforms and can help with cost optimization.

Becoming “meaner” and embracing a new data-driven future

Another big driver for embarking on its transformational IT journey was to modernize IATA’s data management. This is more crucial than ever.

“We are in an ongoing crisis that will last for a long time,” said Buchner. “We have lost all of the forecasting models that we used in the past. It is no longer possible for us to forecast based on historic data, and our member airlines are struggling with a lack of visibility. We are therefore having to deliver new forecasting applications that provide meaningful information to the whole industry with far less data than we had before — this is where our goal of becoming ‘meaner’ comes in.”

In addition to implementing new forecasting models, IATA must comply with data privacy regulations such as the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is especially important given it manages $350 billion a year for its members and large quantities of passenger data.

Buchner said, “We have a big responsibility on our shoulders, and regulatory compliance has only increased as we are having to ask passengers for more personal information to ensure it’s safe for them to fly during the pandemic. This is why Rackspace Technology is a great partner for us, as we know that the team has the expertise to guide us to design our environment with the right governance. On top of this, AWS is focused on delivering great cybersecurity. This will be even more valuable as we introduce Internet of Things (IoT) devices in airports, because we will need to very quickly scale to cope with the increase in data they collect.”

Going green — flying toward a brighter future

Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, alongside AWS and Rackspace Technology, IATA hopes to continue its path as a best-in-class organization that’s leading the way for the rest of the aviation industry. As a result, it plans to make long-term changes that will enable it to consume fewer resources from the planet.

Buchner concluded, “We are on a mission to represent, lead and serve the airline industry. As far as IATA is concerned, we simply cannot continue to operate at the complex level we have been if we are to survive. We must take this rare opportunity to become leaner, meaner and greener, supported by technology partners like Rackspace Technology and AWS. We hope that, alongside other organizations embarking on similar projects, our transformation and focus on becoming leaner, meaner and greener will set a precedent for the rest of the aviation industry.”