Streamlining Airline Operations by Achieving 25% Latency Reduction and Enhanced Performance

Business Opportunity

Migrating To GCP in the Middle of a Merger

The client is one of the leading airlines in India, offering as many as 102 destinations — both domestic and international. Recently, the airline management alongside its sister airline, had resolved to merge their operations thereby extending the airline’s operational capacity. 

In preparation for this merger, the client intended to migrate from on-premises cloud infrastructure, TCL to Google Cloud. This strategic move was meant to scale operations and boost application performance while also dealing with problems such as latency and traffic bottlenecks. Outdated business processes and extensive volumes of data overwhelmed the current infrastructure. 

Our migration strategy for the client was devised to ensure a swift and seamless move to cloud, while ensuring the right roadmap was in place to aid future digital transformations. With reliable connectivity—powered by advanced technology from Google Cloud and improved access to data and applications—latency dropped, and efficiency soared. This migration helped retain their advantage in aviation by optimizing resources within their network of hubs and cities.

The Challenge

Latency on the On-Premises Data Center: One of the major technical issues that the client had to deal with was latency related to its on-premises data center. The existing set-up couldn’t match the increasing demand with the expansion of the airline’s operation; latency issues delayed processing and access to information, generally reducing the functionality of their apps. This prevented the company from effectively extending a seamless experience to clients and made it quite cumbersome to manage its huge network of domestic and international destinations. This pushed them to seek a move from their on-premises data center to a more flexible cloud solution.

The client also had to grapple with the problem of increasing traffic on their on-premises infrastructure. With almost 15 percent of the market share, the client was generating voluminous data and processing it accordingly through their data center. This rise in traffic caused performance bottlenecks, further exacerbating latency issues.

The infrastructure was not designed to handle the rapid growth in data and traffic, leading to inefficiency and potential service disruption. A major reason driving the decision to migrate to Google Cloud was the need to efficiently manage and optimize the growing traffic. Google Cloud offered the right solutions that can scale comfortably when demand increases, and improve overall operational efficiency.

Our Solution

The client, in pursuit of a robust multi-cloud strategy, initiated the migration of the client’s sister airline’s applications from on-premises to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). To ensure a solid foundation in security, networking, and cloud environments aligned with the internal CISO/Security team’s requirements, a GCP Landing Zone was established. This setup was designed to accommodate future scaling, with workloads segregated for business unit-level governance and cloud cost management. A chargeback structure was defined to seamlessly integrate additional workloads or business units, while third-party services were integrated for perimeter security and a Zero Trust model, ensuring secure connections with various data centers and cloud service providers.

The Landing Zone was built to enforce global security and compliance standards, protecting the client’s data with best practices in identity management, access control, monitoring, and encryption. This scalable infrastructure effectively handles increasing traffic and data, eliminating the performance bottlenecks of on-premises systems. Additionally, the solution was designed to be adaptable to evolving business needs, supporting new technologies, applications, and services crucial for the client’s competitiveness in the aviation industry. By implementing standardized security practices and centrally managed services, the Landing Zone enhances operational consistency and visibility, minimizing the risk of misconfigurations and security vulnerabilities.

Benefits of the Google Cloud Landing Zone

By setting up a cloud landing zone on GCP, the client will benefit from:

• Multi-cloud Security Strategy enablement 
• Uniform Governance Hierarchy which simplifies merger and acquisition governance
• Zero-trust security posture throughout the organization
• Uniform network packet inspection method across multi-cloud deployment

Our technology empowered the client to overcome the techno-commercial challenges of their on-premises infrastructure, to improve upon expansion and performance in a manner that helped in sustaining competitive advantages in the aviation business.

Results

The landing zone for the client was set up in a remarkably short span of time. Niveus successfully migrated 10 client applications and one application of the affiliated airline, from the on-premises infrastructure to Google Cloud. This swift and efficient transition garnered positive feedback and a commendable CSAT score from the client, marking the project as a significant success. The implementation of the migration to Google Cloud, facilitated by Niveus, had a significant positive impact on the client’s operations and infrastructure:

• 25% Reduction in Latency: The move to GCP enabled enhanced user experience, delivering 25% reduction in latency.
• Automation Enabled: A substantial percentage of manual processes were automated, leading to a reduction in manual interventions. This included the automation of backup processes for compute VMs using the snapshot scheduler, enhancing data protection and reliability.
• Amount of Data Transformed: Over 3 TB of data was successfully migrated from the on-premises infrastructure to Google Cloud. This large-scale data transformation was executed seamlessly, ensuring data integrity and continuity of operations.
• Decrease in Latency and Improvement in Application Performance: The migration resulted in a notable decrease in latency and a marked improvement in application performance compared to the previous on-premises setup. The advanced technologies and global network of Google Cloud provided faster and more reliable access to data and applications.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Scores Improvement: Following the implementation, the client provided an improved CSAT score with a positive feedback emphasizing on the extended support provided by the Niveus delivery team post the cooling period. The successful migration and enhanced performance of their applications contributed to higher satisfaction levels among end users and all application stakeholders.

Power of Partnership

The client and Niveus collaborated to transition from on-premises to Google Cloud, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and long-term business growth. The seamless migration, combined with strong security and optimized network infrastructure, increased reliability, faster access to applications and data, service speed, and positive feedback. Niveus provided end-to-end support and insights on best practices during and after the migration, ensuring a seamless transition. Their expertise in complex migrations and deep knowledge of advanced technologies on Google Cloud helped the client overcome challenges and optimize its cloud infrastructure. This proactive guidance and support have helped the client realize the full benefits of Google Cloud and maintain its leading position in the airline industry.