Air India moves its IT infrastructure to Cloud, shuts down two data centres

Air India news: Indian carrier Air India on Tuesday announced that it has migrated its computational workload to the Cloud and shut down its two data centres in New Delhi and Mumbai. In the announcement, the Tata Group-owned airline said that the move is expected to help Air India save $1 million annually.

The entire process of migration to Microsoft Azure was managed by Air India's people in Silicon Valley in the US, Gurugram and Kochi in India.

"At Air India, we have adopted 'Cloud-only' as our computational infrastructure philosophy. For us, Cloud is not just about cost savings and operational efficiencies but is a fundamental way to reimagine computing," said Satya Ramaswamy, chief digital and technology officer at Air India.

The computational workloads were migrated to the Cloud from several mainframes, hundreds of servers, a large amount of data, and hundreds of pieces of equipment. The now-closed data centres were once used to drive innovations and automation across multiple spheres of the airline's commercial and financial functions.

Air India was one of the earliest airlines globally to have adopted high-performance computing and storage in the initial years of the computing age.

"Air India's successful migration to Microsoft Azure shows the power and adaptability of the Microsoft Cloud, and how we can effectively support leaders in the global airline industry like Air India," said Puneet Chandok, president at Microsoft India & South Asia.

Air India, which was taken over by the Tata Group in January last year, has embarked on a five-year transformation plan.

The airline also said that it would launch several innovations in its customer-facing channels and its employee experiences.

"These innovations will be powered by cloud capabilities in advanced data analytics and AI, such as Generative AI, that can now be embedded seamlessly all through the company's applications," Air India said.