Situation

Etihad Airways, the national Airline of the United Arab Emirates, was established in July 2003. From its first commercial flight in November 2003, Etihad expanded its operations rapidly, adding almost one new route a month through to the end of 2004. Now the airline serves 17 destinations in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and the airline plans to increase this to 70 destinations by 2010.

As part of its growth plans, Etihad recently created history by placing the largest order ever for new aircraft by a new airline; it will also be one of the first to fly the new A 380 double-decker. The expansion also includes adding more offices to Etihad’s international network, and growing its workforce, which currently includes over 70 nationalities.

To help manage its operations and to ensure that the airline was able to maximize its growth potential, Etihad needed to ensure that it had a robust information communications infrastructure in place. The airline had begun using solutions from a number of different vendors, but in November 2004, it signed an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft, giving the company access to many leading Microsoft applications and a host of other benefits that would help the airline to standardize on Microsoft technologies.

“Etihad could see a clear benefit in the long term from the enterprise agreement through the support from Microsoft that it delivers, the access to upgrades, worldwide coverage, and the low total cost of ownership that it delivers,” said Aqeel Yousef, Vice president Support Services, Etihad Airways. “This agreement gives us the peace of mind that all of our Microsoft applications across all of our offices worldwide will be up-to-date and fully supported by Microsoft, enabling us to focus on our guests and building our business.”

After signing the enterprise agreement, Etihad Airways used Microsoft Outlook as their standard email communications. However, with operations expanding rapidly into new countries, Etihad needed to create better communications across the company and to enable more collaboration between working groups, to foster continued growth and enhance the decision making process within the airline.

Solution

Because of the existing Enterprise Agreement, Microsoft already had a strong working relationship with Eithad, and was able to make suggestions about how the airline could develop its IT infrastructure to meet its growing needs. The agreement includes rights to use a number of Microsoft solutions, including SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Microsoft’s leading application which enables enterprises to develop intelligent portals to connect users, teams, and knowledge. The Microsoft team that work with Etihad suggested that the airline should consider putting a portal solution in place, to help increase efficiency and communications. Etihad assessed the Microsoft solution, along with another portal solution, and following a number of proof of concept sessions and training with Microsoft, decided on SharePoint to create an internal employee portal.

The deployment of SharePoint was carried out by Eithad, working with local Microsoft partner Frequency Consulting, who assisted with the planning, deployment and customization of the portal. The project was begun in December 2004, and went live one month later. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provides an enterprise business solution that integrates information from various systems into one solution through single sign-on and enterprise application integration capabilities, with flexible deployment options and management tools. For Etihad, the portal now connects more than 800 users of the airline in 18 offices worldwide. The portal hosts all of the airlines internal employee information, and includes workspaces for individual departments that allow online collaboration.

Benefits

Etihad’s portal gives the airline a large amount of functionality to improve collaboration and communication in a number of different ways. The portal provides an important communication channel, which complements existing email, by allowing the company to broadcast important messages directly to the whole enterprise without the need for using mass emails that may go unnoticed by staff. The customization features also allows for messages to be sent to specific groups or individuals, to alert them to new content on the portal that is targeted at them.

As we proceed with our plans to expand Etihad, so it becomes more and more important that we are able to communicate properly within the company,” said Aqeel Yousef VP Support Services Etihad Airways. “The Microsoft portal solution gives us a fast and efficient means of communicating across the company, especially with our international offices, and we are able to draw on the experience and knowledge of all of our staff to enable us to make fully informed business decisions.”

The portal will act as a central resource for all of the company’s internal documents and data, so that staff can instantly access information; and provides collaboration capabilities so that stakeholders can work together in real time on projects. Etihad’s IT department is already making use of the collaboration environment. The airline is also looking at integrating a workflow solution, Teamplate from Captaris, and Microsoft’s Content Management Server, to create a powerful workflow and document management solution.

SharePoint Portal can also integrate easily with other applications, allowing the user to create one single interface for different applications and systems. Etihad aims to combine all of its different systems such as human resources, cabin crew timetabling and cargo management into a single desktop interface which can be tailored to different departments. As the airline is already using a large number of Microsoft applications, including Office 2003 and Exchange 2003, this will make integration more straightforward and also help Eithad to realize more benefits from Microsoft’s integrated systems.

The deployment of the portal was very fast and easy, which was important to us that we could begin leveraging the benefits of the solution straightaway, and Microsoft also presented a highly cost effective solution too. Most importantly though is that through the Enterprise Agreement, we are able to access more technologies based on Microsoft .NET, which makes future projects much simpler as well,” Yousef explained.