British Airways Selects Informatica For Data Integration

Informatica Corporation, the independent provider of data integration software, has announced that British Airways has standardised on the Informatica Platform to propel the airline’s next stage of business growth. The full-service global airline is using Informatica technology to deliver timely, trusted and relevant data across the organisation.

As a global premium airline carrying nearly 32 million passengers annually, British Airways generates significant amounts of data about its customers and cargo. This data is dispersed over multiple legacy systems - from crew and flight scheduling, staffing and supply chain applications to engineering records, customer relationship management systems and financial databases. The challenge for British Airways is to manage this data, despite its massive volumes, complex formats and multiplicity of sources.

The airline first implemented Informatica PowerCenter Standard Edition, a key component of the Informatica Platform, six years ago to help access, integrate and trust its information assets. Since that time, the Informatica Platform has been used across the airline to transform data into analytical information and improve operational efficiency.

The Informatica Platform also is the technology foundation for the airline’s predictive analytics, discovering and integrating all the data to populate British Airways integrated commercial warehouse (ICW). The airline relies on the relevant and reliable information in ICW to make decisions associated with a wide variety of activities including ticket sales, flight schedules, and aircraft engineering, to the Executive Club frequent flyer program, flight punctuality and marketing campaign management.

Most recently, British Airways has upgraded its deployment of the Informatica Platform to exploit a grid computing architecture. This enables the airline to deliver 24x7 ‘operational quality’ performance and adhere to rigorous service level agreements (SLAs), while simultaneously enhancing platform scalability and reducing the administrative overhead of supporting its multi-node grid environment.

“To control costs and boost profits in the face of intense competition and other market forces, British Airways needs to maximise its operational efficiency,” says Ian Johnston, IT operations manager, British Airways. “For the past six years, Informatica has been British Airways platform of choice to tackle even the most pressing data integration challenges. The Informatica Platform provides our airline with a high availability, high performance integration capability which supports greater efficiency, compliance with industry and government regulations, and improved responsiveness to industry changes. As the airline completes its merger with Iberia, we look forward to working with Informatica to accelerate and de-risk the merger activity.”

“Airlines around the world have it tough at the moment: relentless competition, fuel price volatility and intense regulatory compliance conditions demand agility and a very high degree of operational efficiency,” says Chris Boorman, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of Education and Enablement, Informatica. “The Informatica Platform gives British Airways the flexibility to reliably integrate vast amounts of different data from legacy systems on a daily basis. This gives the airline the dexterity to adapt quickly to market changes, deliver a consistent travel experience and optimise efficiency.”