Emirates Airline has concluded a $300 million decade long technology services agreement with IBM for the provision of IT Infrastructure service delivery to enable the airline improve communication efficiency on its passenger support systems and functions.
Under the agreement, IBM will, through a fully managed mainframe and storage service, help the airline to encrypt its data in real-time as well as serve as a platform for the airline to build new apps that will support Application Programmable Interface (API) economy; a commercial exchange of business functions, capabilities, or competencies as services packaged in APIs.
Emirates Airline is the fourth largest carrier of international passengers and the growing use of smartphones in today’s world made the deal timely. The agreement is expected to boost its business application performance, resilience, scalability, an agile service delivery model, and significant operational savings.
The more than 30 year partnership between the airline and the giant technology company could continue as its Z Systems technology has helped to process ultra-high volumes of real-time business transactions including flight reservations, inventory, check-in, ticketing, and flight information. Emirates registered a profit increment of 56% over the year as it reported a profit of $1.93 billion for the financial year to March 31.
The civil aviation sector is highly competitive but Dubai based Emirates carrier has been able to improve with stiff challenge from UAE national carrier Etihad Airways based in Abu Dhabi and Qatar Airways in Doha.
