SEATTLE. European airline Ryanair (NASDAQ:RYAAY) is closing a majority of its data centers and moving its infrastructure to the cloud with Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), in Seattle. Ryanair is rebuilding and transforming legacy systems into cloud-based, innovative customer travel services by standardizing on various AWS services, including AWS databases, data analytics, machine learning, and deep learning services.
Ryanair officials are opting for AWS to transform the digital experience for its over 130 million customers, and planning to close the vast majority of the company’s datacenters over the next three years. The airline already runs several core production workloads on AWS, such as Ryanair Rooms and Ryanair.com, and is building a company-wide data lake on Amazon S3, leveraging Amazon Kinesis to gain deeper insights from customer and business data.
With AWS, Ryanair is able to innovate, optimize costs, deploy globally, and become a more agile organization in the cloud, officials say. After Ryanair rebuilt Ryanair Rooms on AWS, its customers can now compare millions of hotel deals and accommodations without interruption or delays.
Ryanair is working with the AWS ML Solutions Lab to create an application that enables the company to detect surges in demand for flight segments and anticipate schedule changes automatically. In addition, by migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon Aurora, Ryanair can now run one of the largest e-mail marketing campaigns in Europe with higher performance at a fraction of the cost, sending out 22 million emails daily to customers about travel bookings or sales events.
“We’ve chosen to work with the world’s leading cloud to develop and deliver services that will transform our customers’ travel experiences. By rebuilding core applications, converting data into actionable insights, and creating intelligent applications, we are putting the solutions in place to continue our leadership in the travel industry,” says Ryanair Chief Technology Officer John Hurley. “Machine learning is hugely important to our growth, and we’re pursuing a variety of AWS machine learning services, including Amazon SageMaker, to enhance customer user interface (UI)/user experience (UX) and personalize the MyRyanair portal for every unique traveler.
“We’re currently trialing Amazon Lex to enhance our customer support experience, by intelligently routing customer support requests to the right type of assistance — whether that be a customer support representative or an artificial intelligence-driven interaction,” Hurley continues. “We were also one of the first companies in Europe to support Amazon Alexa, and created the MyRyanair skill for Amazon Alexa to handle account booking, flight inquiries, and frequently asked questions.”
“Leaders in the airline industry, like many large enterprises, are using AWS in a meaningful way to evolve their businesses and innovate on behalf of their customers. They’re deploying new applications to the cloud by default, and looking to migrate as many of their existing applications as they can as quickly as possible,” explains Mike Clayville, vice president, worldwide commercial sales at AWS. “Because we have the most comprehensive set of cloud services, including our leading machine learning and deep learning services, Ryanair will be able to employ those services to drive greater customer and employee satisfaction. We’re excited to help them create first-class experiences on AWS as they continue to use our capabilities and services at an accelerated pace.”
For over 12 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 125 services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 54 Availability Zones (AZs) within 18 geographic regions and one Local Region around the world, spanning the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the UK. AWS services are trusted by millions of active customers around the world — including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies — to power their infrastructure, make them more agile, and lower costs.
Ryanair is Europe’s top airline, carrying over 130 million customers p.a. on more than 2,000 daily flights from 85 bases, connecting 216 destinations in 37 countries on a fleet of 430 Boeing 737 aircraft, with a further 240 Boeing 737’s on order, which will enable Ryanair to lower fares and grow traffic to 200 million customers p.a. by FY24. Ryanair has a team of more than 13,000 highly skilled aviation professionals delivering Europe’s No.1 on-time performance, and an industry leading 33-year safety record. In 2017, Ryanair became the first European airline to have carried over 1 billion customers.
