HP Enterprise Services unveiled HP Converged Cloud Services for Airlines, which it describes as the airline industry’s first hybrid delivery approach to “an intelligent airline cloud.”
Brian Cook, vice president and general manager of HP Enterprise Services’ Transportation Industry Group, said HP’s goal is to “move toward exposing more services as cloud-based services to help airlines get additional revenue into the pipeline and to take costs out of their infrastructure.”
HP Enterprise Services unveiled HP Converged Cloud Services for Airlines, which it describes as the airline industry’s first hybrid delivery approach to “an intelligent airline cloud.”
Brian Cook, vice president and general manager of HP Enterprise Services’ Transportation Industry Group, said HP’s goal is to “move toward exposing more services as cloud-based services to help airlines get additional revenue into the pipeline and to take costs out of their infrastructure.”
The package of services takes a tiered approach:
• HP Passenger Service Solution, which combines core HP Travel and Transportation industry solutions into a single integrated airline inventory, reservation and travel platform.
• HP Airline Service Oriented Architecture Platform, which offers a library of web services for rapid development of new airline products. Standalone applications and data can be enhanced and updated as market changes occur.
• HP Enterprise Cloud Services A Virtual Private Cloud that combines server, storage and network resources into a prebuilt off-premise cloud based on HP Converged Infrastructure.
Cook said that among the cloud-based services that HP plans to offer is “PCI security as a service.”
“We’re able to capture credit card information before it gets to an airline,” he said.
The information goes to a data center where it is encrypted, or “tokenized,” before being sent to the airline system.
Becoming PCI-compliant in the traditional sense is an onerous process that is a “huge expense for an airline,” Cook said.
Interjet, a Mexico-based airline, recently began using HP Enterprise Cloud Services’ Virtual Private Cloud to manage schedules for flight simulators.
The application manages training time slots for Interjet’s and other airlines’ pilots.
The cloud service enables Interjet to expand and contract its resources as needed to meet changing demand.
HP also will offer “EMD as a service,” Cook said. The electronic miscellaneous document enables airlines, customers and sales channels to track, fulfill and reconcile ancillary services.
“The way forward is to make these services much more easily consumable by airlines,” Cook said.
“Because the cloud is a shared environment, it can reduce the need for big capital expenditures and allow airlines to prioritize their investments.”
HP also envisions “Storm Computing,” an idea that arose out of the volcanic ash cloud crisis in 2010.
“We see a great opportunity to provide additional capacity in a crisis,” Cook said. “You don’t have to pay for it until you need it.”
Once the crisis is over, “you can scale back that service, and your operating costs go back to normal.”
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