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London’s second largest international airport Gatwick has migrated to a virtualized environment! This news has created quite a buzz in the technological sphere. Cloud experts and technological pundits have described this migration as one of the significant ones. Let’s see why – If reports are to be believed, then the CIO of Gatwick Airport, Michael Ibbitson has been responsible for this change. Elaborating about this switchover, Ibbitson has stated that most airports have opted for big infrastructure investment in IT which doesn’t make sense. With hundreds of companies across the world managing their operations in the cloud at a lesser expense and responsibility, it is only wise to cloudify airport’s operations as well. Today, the Gatwick airport uses about a dozen of cloud services such as - Box (storage and collaboration platform) and Okta (identity management service). In addition to these, it has also automated its IT management through ServiceNow. Ibbitson has further stated that one of the main reasons behind choosing cloud has been the anywhere- anytime accessibility. Making systems (which were previously tied to office-bound computers) now available on any device has incalculable benefits. Cloud-based Airport Collaborative Decision Making system – Ibbitson has made a special mention of this latest addition. According to him, this system will enable the airport staff to be accessible via the web browser. Moreover, they can also share the latest aircraft-related information easily. The implementation of this system is much awaited as it will extend the reach of Gatwick’s operational systems to its partners. Example - Airport Collaborative Decision Making system, will help partners such as EasyJet airlines to get a situational awareness of Gatwick from their control center in Luton. What is interesting to see is that Ibbitson has not advocated complete migration from the legacy environment to cloud. Instead of ripping out every in-house system, he has suggested using cloud services where required. This advice has come at the right time when many businesses have made the mistake of cloudifying blindly. Business entrepreneurs/decision makers need to understand that instead of mindlessly jumping into the cloud bandwagon, what is required from them is to build a strategy determining the list of applications to cloudify. Present business process needs to be analyzed properly to understand – · Existing applications that needs to be migrated to the virtualized environment · New custom cloud applications to be developed. As Ibbitson states – ‘’Examining which applications will need replacement should be the first step. Along with it, focus should be given on identifying the loopholes of the business process and trying to cover them up with cloud-based custom software development’’ The concept of BYOD ruling high The introduction of cloud-based applications has pushed the trend of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). And the same is getting to be seen in the Gatwick airport too. Approx 1,600 staff at Gatwick has opted to use their own devices at work. Smartphones and tablets are common among the security and operational staff. BYOD is quite an interesting trend in Gatwick airport especially because previously the airport was providing BlackBerry devices to its staff. However, that is a history now. Ibbitson has declared that they want their employees to have complete choice regarding which device they want to use at work. Flexibility in choosing software-as-a-service Like other cloud using business entrepreneurs, Ibbitson has also appreciated the flexibility of choosing software-as-a-service model. He has made special mention of Gatwick’s flexibility to swap between providers. Elaborating further on this context, Ibbitson has commented – ‘’There is no denying the fact that technical and operational challenges are still there while switching across different cloud providers. However, it is comparatively less complicated than in-house systems. Thanks to cloud that have made it viable for us to bring another cloud service in and test it with a group of users.’’ Author’s Bio: Paul Anderson is an experienced writer who has written many articles and blogs on custom software development. In this blog, he talks about the popularity of custom software development and states a few of its key benefits.
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