INFORM sends aviation software securely to the cloud with Claranet
INFORM
INFORM develops software to optimise business processes using digital decision making based on artificial intelligence and operations research. Today, more than 750 software engineers, data analysts and consultants support more than 1,000 customers worldwide in industry, retail, airports, ports, logistics, banking and insurance.
Strategic goal cloud transformation
In the aviation industry, INFORM has proven itself as a global market leader with over 70 customers at more than 160 airports, in particular through its strong innovative capacity: Among other things, INFORM also provides its customers with GroundStar, a software suite for optimised air traffic processes, as a cloud solution.
GroundStar meets all the requirements of ground handlers in airport operations and covers a wide range of solutions. These include planning, controlling and analysing ground handling, aircraft maintenance and hub and turnaround management.
By working with Claranet as hybrid cloud experts, we can offer our GroundStar customers additional added value in line with our software-as-a-service strategy. They can flexibly choose how the software is to be provided: whether on premise on their own or external infrastructure or as a SaaS solution in a public cloud."
Claranet scores with hybrid cloud expertise
InFORM opted for Claranet. The decisive factor was the managed service provider's specialisation in hosting business-critical environments on flexible cloud infrastructures and their agile operation under the highest security, performance and availability requirements. Other criteria were the size of the company and Claranet's international focus.
"Our projects are long-term due to their complexity; two to three years is the minimum. Customers are just as committed to us over the long term; in some cases, we have been supplying customers with our GroundStar systems for more than 20 years," says Michael Nöth from INFORM's Aviation division. "Accordingly, we need reliable partners that we trust 100 per cent in order to be able to work with them on a long-term basis and on an equal footing. Claranet is just such a partner."
GroundStar runs on Claranet platform
Claranet proved itself in a project for ground operations in the passenger area at a major German airline. INFORM wanted to offer the airline the opportunity to use GroundStar in an on-premise licence model.
The software was to be hosted on an external IT infrastructure. Operating the software in a public cloud environment was not possible due to the Group's specifications. Instead, the GroundStar system is hosted on a Managed Application Hosting (MAH) platform from Claranet, a state-of-the-art data centre platform with scale-out architecture in the Claranet data centre in Frankfurt.
Scale-up and scale-out allow resources such as CPU performance or RAM to be flexibly adapted to changing requirements. The front end is streamed to the customer or client via remote desktop.
Claranet was also able to score points in terms of network coupling: The aviation company required a reliable point-to-point connection to Claranet. As a multi-purpose provider, Claranet was able to fulfil this requirement: A redundant connection concept (Frankfurt and Amsterdam locations) ensures reliability. If one connection fails, the other connection automatically takes over.
"The close coordination between us, Claranet, the customer and other IT partners of the airline, which was necessary due to the airline's complex requirements, also worked very well," reports Michael Nöth. "The customer feedback was positive, the MAH platform is clear, very stable and performs well."
Point landing: GroundStar on AWS for logistics company
Claranet was able to demonstrate its expertise in the public cloud in a project for a British cargo airline, which was implemented almost simultaneously with the on-premise project. The logistics specialist wanted to use GroundStar as a public cloud solution for the ground handling of aircraft at London Heathrow Airport. AWS was to be used as the platform.
Claranet, as a certified AWS Premier Consulting Partner, assumed responsibility for the setup, operation and security of the public cloud service. The physical location of the system is the AWS data centre in London. The logistics company's dispatchers and planners use the software directly in AWS. Up to 40 users can access the system simultaneously. The employees in the dispatch department retrieve their work orders from the system via mobile devices. Here, 100 simultaneous users are possible.
This project required not only cloud expertise and experience, but also commitment: "We had a very tight schedule; the customer's sophisticated, complex production system had to be ready for use as a SaaS solution on AWS within three months by a fixed date," recalls Michael Nöth. "We made a precision landing, it was a strenuous but extremely good joint effort and the customer was highly satisfied."
Cloud transformation: added value for INFORM
"Claranet supports independent software vendors at the infrastructure level in providing solutions via the cloud and thus establishing new business models," adds Mickael Zewde, Business Development Manager at Claranet. "We specialise in running software securely and efficiently in any cloud environment. This enables INFORM to offer customers flexible hosting options for the GroundStar system: On Claranet's own state-of-the-art MAH platform or in public cloud environments such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud," says Mickael Zewde.
