Executive Summary
In 2022, a leading airline embarked on a digital transformation initiative, aiming to modernize and better serve its customers by modernizing 80% of its workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS). As the client transitioned from tens to hundreds of applications on AWS, its internal team faced constraints due to traditional, manually intensive deployment approaches.
With the assistance of AHEAD, an AWS Partner, and Harness, the client reduced deployment resources by 70%, allowing key internal players to focus on future innovations.
Additionally, the client improved developer productivity by 40% through deployment pipeline automation, resulting in a 75% increase in deployment rates.
By April 2023, this client became the largest airline in the world based on available seat miles, a key industry performance metric.
Addressing Legacy Technology with Scheduled Migration Flights to the Cloud
The client aimed to become the world’s largest and most beloved airline, integrating the customer experience into every aspect of its technology, team, and travel experience. Alongside modernizing and augmenting its aircraft fleet, the client sought to elevate the customer experience, improve operational excellence, and reduce costs by $2 billion while also cutting global carbon emissions.
Transforming 80% of the client’s workloads into microservices on AWS significantly improved operations, customer experience, and scalability. However, the company’s legacy IT infrastructure and technical debt hindered innovation efforts. Developers spent considerable time fixing and deploying code, requiring an average of 30 developers to manage and maintain the airline’s deployment environments.
Digital Transformation Journey Takes Flight
After evaluating industry partners, the client chose to work with AWS Partners AHEAD and Harness to eliminate bottlenecks and drive its digital transformation forward. With AHEAD’s IT consulting and technical implementation expertise, coupled with Harness’ end-to-end software delivery platform to automate manual processes, the client rapidly accelerated productivity and innovation, allowing engineers to focus on writing new code.
By leveraging AWS services such as Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), and AWS Lambda, the client significantly reduced infrastructure costs and modernized application development. The enterprise-level implementation was quicker than usual due to the client’s integration with AWS.
Increasing Deployment Efficiency by 99%
Since partnering with AHEAD and Harness for its AWS modernization efforts, the client has seen a 40% increase in developer productivity and a 75% increase in deployment rates. By implementing consistent and repeatable CI/CD deployments, the client reduced developer team overhead by 99%, going from 10 people needed to verify deployments to just one.
Simplifying Security and Reducing Pipelines by 98%
With security as a core focus, AHEAD and Harness began the software development process with a “shift left” approach, moving security to the development sphere and enabling developers to write code while security teams prioritized other workloads.
Through this approach, the airline reduced the number of pipelines from thousands to less than two dozen. This simplified and fortified security system supports the goals of the United Next initiative, which aims to control unit costs while enhancing customer experiences.
Piloting Pipelines and Deployments for the Airline on AWS
Due to the global impact of its business, AHEAD and Harness maintain constant communication with the airline to track transformation progress, refine approaches, and optimize migration costs. With over 200 applications in production and more than double that in the pipeline set to be in production over the next 18 months, the client is soaring in the cloud.