Beyond the buzzwords: cloud computing and Amadeus

Many people assume that the now seemingly ubiquitous term cloud computing is about running a large collection of different servers. Or is rather simply about virtualisation. But in fact, the very notion of cloud – certainly in its truest sense – actually demands something of a full-scale paradigm shift in traditional thinking, to the point where in cloud computing the data centre becomes managed as a single computer.

With this in mind, because servers and machines are intentionally treated as commodities, only the global computing power really matters. Of course, transitioning to this new mind-set (and new technological structure in tandem) requires some adaptation. But it also provides many shared and highly-valuable benefits in return, such as built-in scalability and an intrinsic tolerance to failure, increased flexibility, and simply by design; far better use of resources, meaning less operational issues and a quicker time to market.

It is against this backdrop that at Amadeus we are fully embracing next-gen cloud services: adapting, transitioning and evolving our existing IT framework, including our systems and processes, to today’s cloud environment. We want to be able to bring technology closer to our customers, to take advantage of cloud-based operating, deployment and management systems to accommodate different business models, and ultimately to deliver more flexible applications more quickly than ever before.

With this in mind we are very proud to herald the successful launch of Amadeus Cloud Services, supported by an open source project we are developing in collaboration with Red Hat on OpenShift Enterprise, to build a tangible cloud-based applications platform driving scalability, agility, efficiency and availability for all Amadeus customers.

Amadeus Cloud Services significantly simplifies our historic approach to operations and will meet demand for distributed computing with multi-data centre capability. Operating in the cloud enables us to deliver automated recovery, removes the micro-management of underlying infrastructure, and makes more efficient and effective management use of our applications generally. Crucially, it delivers far superior responsiveness, driving and enabling ‘always on’ ultra-high availability of our products, services and solutions.

To find out more about Amadeus Cloud Services, or how we’re working with Red Hat and other leading open source partners, please visit this link.