Google Cloud has teamed up with Comair, operator of the British Airways brand and the Kulula budget carrier in Sub-Saharan Africa, to modernise the airline’s IT infrastructure and legacy applications.

According to a statement released to the media, Comair completed its infrastructure optimisation plans as it migrated six labour-intensive, on-premise datacentres to Google Cloud. The migration of traditional IT infrastructure enables the airline to run key workloads that include important financial data, secure customer records, airplane navigation information, among others.

Comair stated that it has benefitted from “the security, reliability, and flexibility provided by Google Cloud, which has helped increase the airline’s efficiency during high-traffic seasons and peak travel times, as it needed to scale to meet consumer travel demand.”

“Comair is also now better positioned to build a data foundation using AI and machine learning using Google Cloud tools. In particular, Comair will be able to analyse customer data in a deeper manner, creating personalised products and services, opening up more opportunities and improving the customer experience,”

The partnership aims to modernise Comair’s legacy applications, including its kulula.com booking application, using prominent tools like Firebase and Flutter to upgrade its functionalities and provide the scalability the airline requires.

“Comair customers now turn to the Kulula application as the main channel to interact with the airline, following upgrades that have enabled more seamless booking and flight payments,” reads an excerpt from the statement.

Niral Patel, Director of Google Cloud Africa.

Niral Patel, Director of Google Cloud Africa, said: “With the customer positioned at the heart of everything the team does at Comair, we are proud to deliver the cloud infrastructure capabilities and tools that will further engrain the airline’s brand promise to be the easiest to book and pay. Comair’s digital transformation journey started before the pandemic, and was indeed accelerated by it, but the airline had taken a head start to digitisation before the global lockdown was even in sight by migrating to the cloud. Also, by accelerating cloud adoption, Comair is able to reduce processing power for its systems and become more sustainable.”

Avsharn Bachoo, CIO of Comair said: “We are delighted to have moved to Google Cloud at a time when Cloud has become the foundation that enables businesses to transform, differentiate and gain competitive advantage. The sooner you digitally transform, the quicker you’re able to respond to uncertain times. As a result, the digital maturity measures we’ve put in place have helped drive a post-lockdown recovery.”