Lesson 10 IBM Cloud Case Study

 

With the increased competition, American Airlines embraced a shift towards improving customer satisfaction by developing a project, “Public Cloud Platform as a Service.”[i] with the help of IBM. Public Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that provide a computing platform. “Cloud computing is the use of services and resources over the internet.” [ii]

I enjoy traveling but I hate the idea of going through the painful process of booking, rebooking and even cancellation. Therefore, my preferences in choosing airline is based on service, cost and safety.

American Airline is one of the leading airline in United States and IBM continues to beat its competitors by its innovation to which include the Cloud Suite. The idea behind the partnership was to enhance the customer experience in rebooking flights as well as “to take advantage of new technology features.” (International Business Machines Corp., 2018)

 

The Problem

Often, travelers feel frustrated whenever their flight gets cancelled and what’s even worst is to spend longer hours to speak to the airline representative to re-route or re-book the flight. The case study stated that legacy facing-application “were based on monolithic code, duplicated and managed in silos” (International Business Machines Corp., 2018) to which, through this cloud migration, it is seen as an opportunity to fully remove the airline’s existing key legacy features such as:

  • Architecture
  • Platform
  • Organization
  • Development and
  • Operations approach

 

According to the case study report, through the project, it was expected to deliver:

  • Digital self- service tools
  • Customer value more rapidly across its enterprise
  • Additional innovative applications

 

The solution

The IBM Cloud Foundry was put into test during hurricane Irma where it was deployed “globally to all American’s airport” and it “worked flawlessly” according to Patrick Morin, a Managing Director of Customer Technology. This application which can be accessed through the airlines website, aa.com, mobile app and airport kiosk was a result of a great plan by IBM. In fact, according to the case study report, the project called Dynamic Rebooking was released earlier than the original date.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND

 

Cloud Migration: Pros & Cons?

Many organization rushes into cloud migration as it offers countless benefit from reducing costs, better storage, automated tasks, to operational flexibility. However, it is important to note that it also offers disadvantages. For instance, part of IBM’s plan is to accelerate the Airlines application development that brought “the new cloud-native apps” to which a designed to push the old components to retired. This adoption present possible risks such as: [iii]

  • end users have less autonomy when running cloud application
  • compromised administrative credentials could exposed other users within the network
  • insider threat(s) and many more

My Take

The advent of the coronavirus rushed another technological trend into the spotlight. Cloud has been tested as many employee’s – even students – migrate into remote environment. With heavy workloads, sharing files and documents all become possible with the help of cloud.

I have always liked the idea of bringing everything into cloud. This gives me a lot of flexibility, easy access to all my file and enhance collaboration. Therefore, the decision by American Airlines to enhance its service by introducing the Dynamic Rebooking tool with the help of IBM, is something I would agree to.

It is important to acknowledge though, that the risks mentioned above can be mitigated by:

  • Provider’s end-user license agreement (EULA) that explains which limit the provider can place on the use of the deployment.
  • Carefully weight vendors that strictly follows compliance policies for data security.
  • Manage user access
    • Encourage employees to use two-factor authenticator (2FA) or multiple-factor authenticator (MFA).
    • Automated solutions that monitor and analyze user activity.

References:

[i]  International Business Machines Corp., (2018, March). American Airlines: The route to customer experience transformation is through the cloud. IBM. https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/american-airlines

 

[ii]  Canvas learning management system. (n.d.). Cloud Computing. The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved April 4, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2110494/modules/items/31028720

 

[iii]  Morrow, T. (2018, March 5). 12 Risks, Threats, & Vulnerabilities in Moving to the Cloud. Software Engineering Institute. https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/blog/12-risks-threats-vulnerabilities-in-moving-to-the-cloud/