Air India moves its computational workload to cloud; shuts two data centres

Air India has shut down its two data centres and has moved its computational workload to the cloud, a move that will help the loss-making airline save nearly USD 1 million annually.

In a release on Tuesday, the Tata Group-owned airline said it has successfully migrated to a cloud-only IT infrastructure, having closed its historic data centres located in Mumbai and New Delhi.

"The closure of the data centres will further result in net savings of nearly a million dollars every year," it said.

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

According to the release, the now-closed data centres were once used to drive innovations and automations across multiple spheres of the airline's commercial and financial functions.

"We have adopted a strategic mix of Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service methodologies in Air India's transformation journey, allowing us to innovate faster...," Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Air India, said.

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