Earlier this year Amadeus announced its new partnership with Microsoft for a ‘once-in-a-generation’ transformation of its systems, which currently support hundreds of airlines, airports, hotels, and rail providers, as well as thousands of travel sellers. The partnership included joint innovation and product development to envision, design and deliver cutting-edge travel solutions.
Now, nine months into the deal, the company plans to switch over to Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology. More insight about the transformation and a glimpse into some of the projects underway are covered in detail in a newly published report, ‘Journey to Cloud Planet’.
The report looks at the benefits of cloud capabilities for the travel industry and the technology transformation which will see more than four hundred high performance applications transitioning to Microsoft Azure.
The report highlights a first for the travel industry with the development of the Amadeus Data Mesh, the next evolution of a data lake, which joins up travel data in an open, shareable, and transparent manner to help fuel data science and train advanced machine learning algorithms.
Christophe Bousquet, chief technology officer, Amadeus said: “This report clearly lays out our vision to transform travel technology with Microsoft and I am confident it will inspire and create optimism in the industry as we continue down the path of recovery.
“The move to Microsoft Azure is the greatest technology transformation in Amadeus’ 30-year history and it marks the dawn of a new era. Travel data will be openly accessible, within a defined governance framework.
“The pace of innovation will drastically increase. Our customers can build the cross-industry traveller experiences we know are essential to increasing the overall value of travel.”
The report offers a glimpse into the innovation projects currently being co-developed by Amadeus and Microsoft. These include the Traveler Centric Platform and other key areas such as travel search, and business travel.
Sanders said: “Being able to create a traveller experience that is much more hassle free is exciting, particularly when it comes to helping create a smoother journey for travelers.
“I think Amadeus and Microsoft can create solutions that will add more value services, reduce cost, and support the needs of travelers.
“Bringing data together and driving an AI solution on top of it will help not only Amadeus but also its partners to leverage better data-driven outcomes.”
New releases are also expected from Amadeus; features that tap into Microsoft’s vast “ecosystem” of productivity apps, including leveraging its Xbox gaming console’s virtual reality capabilities to explore the metaverse.
