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September 09, 2024

SWISS targets 30% cost savings, increased passenger satisfaction with Azure

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) faced end-of-life support for two costly on-premises datacenters.The airline recognized that a move to the cloud would boost flexibility, add volume, and lower costs.
SWISS opted for a back-to-back migration and modernization with Azure, building on its 20-year history with Microsoft technology.It shifted its on-premises databases to Azure SQL and others and migrated integral legacy infrastructure to Oracle on Azure.
SWISS is set to achieve up to 30% cost savings compared to running on-premises.It has achieved a remarkable boost in platform stability along with enhanced security visibility, now operating in a more proactive manner.
SWISS

As we grow in Azure, we’re projecting a 30% cost reduction compared to our on-premises costs.

Stefano Buonaiuto, Head of IT Operations, SWISS

Taking flight to the cloud

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) is Switzerland’s leading air carrier, serving more than 100 destinations around the world as part of the Germany-based Lufthansa Group. SWISS is dedicated to delivering the highest product and service quality and has set ambitious CO2 goals for itself, planning to halve its 2019 net CO2 emissions by 2030 and make its business and operations entirely carbon-neutral by 2050. It also aims to reduce the CO2 footprint within its IT infrastructure.

 

Committed to technology advancement and growth, SWISS started its cloud journey in 2018 at a time when it was re-evaluating all its disjointed IT architecture. Facing end-of-life support for two costly on-premises datacenters, SWISS recognized that moving to the cloud would boost flexibility, which would also help lower costs across its environment and support the goal of reducing its environmental impact. “We compared the costs of virtual machines (VMs) on-premises and in the cloud and we get a high savings potential moving to the cloud, and with that also comes a carbon footprint reduction in IT,” says Stefano Buonaiuto, Head of IT Operations at SWISS. “Going to platform as a service (PaaS) and simplifying administration would also drive indirect cost savings because we don’t have to manage the lifecycle or take care of resources for the data centers if a cloud product can take care of that.”

 

A cloud migration would also free SWISS from the burdens and limitations of aging hardware, creating a domino effect of benefits touching all areas of the business. “Embracing hardware-free solutions allows us to adopt greener platforms and energy resources with enthusiasm,” says Habib Qureshi, Solutions Architect at SWISS. “When we shifted our on-premises databases to Microsoft Azure SQL and other platform services like Azure Storage accounts, we not only lowered our costs by reducing operational and maintenance overhead and increasing scalability, but we also gained executional performance with certain products like Azure NetApp Files and greatly reduced licensing issues.”

 

The decision to tap into Azure was a no-brainer based on the airline’s 20-year history with Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft 365. SWISS had a looming migration deadline but still wanted to take advantage of infrastructure as code and managed services, so it opted for a hybrid strategy of redeploying and rebuilding in Azure on an application-by-application basis. “We didn’t want to endanger the migration by doing a full modernization at the same time, especially with around 70 applications in the scope of our migration project,” explains Buonaiuto.

 

SWISS IT staff developed an internal document outlining all the airline’s IT applications and migration parameters and assessed the potential impact on its resources, budget, and timeline. They used that analysis to determine how much the airline could innovate while staying within its projected timeline—using, for example, a broad variety of VMs available in Azure. “We decided we could migrate from a VM to a VM but have the database go to a PaaS,” says Buonaiuto. “We could set up new VMs with code, install applications on top, and then migrate the data to them to have the best chance of success. As we grow in Azure, we’re projecting a 30% cost reduction compared to our on-premises costs.”

 

A custom-built Azure solution supporting legacy infrastructure, new services

Every airline within the Lufthansa Group must adhere to standard policy governance, and in return, they gain access to a central Azure environment. Within certain boundaries, SWISS can use any Azure or other Microsoft product it deems fit for its needs through its subscription to the environment, and it can define boundary limits and network topologies aligned with the group’s IT. The airline currently uses Azure DevOps for source code and development, Microsoft Power Platform—including Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps—for process automation and analytics, Microsoft Defender for security, and Microsoft Entra ID, which acts as an umbrella for access management across the full technology stack.

 

“We adopted Azure as our primary platform, unlocking numerous features,” notes Qureshi. “When we moved to Azure, we used all its infrastructure as well as its platform services, including compute, storage, networking, and security. We are also heavy believers in infrastructure as code, and the tool of the trade there is HashiCorp Terraform on Azure. We have begun implementing continuous delivery automation for infrastructure using Azure DevOps, as well as applying policy as code.”

 

SWISS also migrated integral legacy infrastructure to Oracle on Azure, including special applications for crew planning, cargo, billing automation, and revenue accounting. It found support for other on-premises applications with Microsoft .NET and SQL Server. “We want to use open technology and Microsoft opened the door in offering other operating systems and programming languages outside of Windows,” says Buonaiuto. “We have all the possibilities on Azure, be it Java, Oracle, MySQL, or .NET. I think this openness to having different technologies coexist gives us added confidence in being on the Azure platform.”

 

The airline is on track with its migration goals, including the desire to increase its storage and computing capacity compared to its former on-premises workloads. To achieve this, it’s using Azure NetApp Files to access high-performance storage and taken a multi-zone approach for its business-critical systems. “We also have better scalability especially during peak times, when we can add additional temporary capacity to meet the required response times,” says Buonaiuto. “When we were on-premises, our providers couldn’t activate or deactivate new infrastructure as quickly as we needed. With a conventional provider, you don’t have these pay-as-you-go options, so we have some real gains there from Azure.”

 

Becoming a technology trendsetter and expanding the focus for the future

Within the Lufthansa Group, SWISS describes itself as a technology-loving company and looks forward to exploring and making use of the latest and best products available in the market. “Within the whole group, we at SWISS have a unique flavor in that we also have an in-house powerhouse of IT developers underscoring our technology maturity,” says Qureshi. “It’s not like we only follow the standards—we are part of setting the standards and bringing innovations.” SWISS shares its solutions built on Azure across the group, including its passenger-facing, self-service chatbot framework for managing bookings. Once limited to SWISS, the bot is now used by multiple Lufthansa Group airlines.

 

As SWISS completes the final stages of its cloud migration, the airline will soon shift focus to the existing services it can modernize and which new products it may add. “There’s something new in Azure every two to three months, so we’re adopting the technology that’s available today and keeping an eye on the future landscape,” says Qureshi. The Lufthansa Group IT team is working on enhancing business continuity management and expanding its multi-region architecture for all of its member airlines. Meanwhile, SWISS IT staff are delivering on their own priorities, including evaluating Microsoft Fabric for data warehouse modernization. “We plan to increase workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service and gradually introduce AI workloads with Azure OpenAI,” adds Qureshi.

 

Offering a familiar passenger experience with more confidence, satisfaction

SWISS has achieved a remarkable boost in platform stability along with enhanced security visibility, which means it now operates in a more proactive manner. Moving forward, it hopes to set more fact-based key performance indicators for sustainability that will help it drive meaningful change across SWISS and its industry. The airline’s back-to-back migration and modernization efforts will also generate valuable efficiencies for IT teams at both SWISS and across the Lufthansa Group to ultimately help improve the passenger experience.

 

“We’re migrating the applications and workloads that support the real-time, mission-critical operations related to the flights, baggage, passengers, and interactions between various authorities and airports, which creates a huge level of complex communication behind the scenes,” describes Qureshi. “We know our Azure environment is working because airline operations are stabilized.” Concludes Buonaiuto, “We want passengers to have the same great experience even if we have a higher workload on our systems, and Azure gives me the confidence that we can do that.”

 

When we shifted our on-premises databases to Microsoft Azure SQL and other platform services like Azure Storage accounts, we not only lowered our costs by reducing operational and maintenance overhead and increasing scalability, but we also gained executional performance with products like Azure NetApp Files and greatly reduced licensing issues.

Habib Qureshi, Solutions Architect, SWISS

We want passengers to have the same great experience even if we have a higher workload on our systems, and Azure gives me the confidence that we can do that.

Stefano Buonaiuto, Head of IT Operations, SWISS

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