1E and SITA: Helping airlines connect their global networks

A century ago commercial flight was bold and glamorous, a new industry that dared to push innovation to the limit. It was this spirit of invention that has spurred the dramatic changes and improvements to the airline industry we have experienced over the past few decades.
Today, millions of passengers rely on air transport to move from one part of the world to another, growth that has shifted the focus from innovation to safety and security as a priority.
Yet in a fast-changing industry such as aviation, innovation – and technology in particular – remains key to driving even greater safety, increased efficiency and serving a growing number of passengers better. No one understands this better than SITA, who helps airports and airlines transform air travel through the smart use of technology in every aspect of their business.
SITA draws on its decades of experience to solve the industry’s biggest challenges, often working with partners who provide unique and niche capabilities and knowledge.
1E is one of those partners helping SITA meet a small but significant challenge. In this case it is helping airlines keep their remote offices connected to the airline’s central hub while providing the most up to date end-user computing facilities.
“Airlines usually have a very small number of people at these sites, but for an airline with a huge global network these could include hundreds of locations,” says Pierre Guiol, Product Manager of End-user Computing at SITA.  “These sites generally have limited bandwidth which is predominately used to support core functions such as boarding and reservations. This makes distributing software, updates and patches to an airline’s global network a real challenge. IT operations usually struggle to push out a 300 megabyte applications or updates and some airlines regularly fly out IT staff to their offices globally armed with a USB stick to provide updates.”
Using 1E’s Nomad offering, SITA is now able to offer a solution to that problem. Nomad allows bandwidth throttling, removes the competition between IT and business traffic, and its peer-to-peer delivery eliminates servers and complexity from the network. “In other words, Nomad allows airlines to use their bandwidth more wisely. Nomad is able to prioritize data while identifying periods of low usage in each location, using any spare bandwidth to dispatch updates and software digitally. That means there is now no longer any need to dispatch IT personnel to remote offices in person. Updates can be done centrally,” says Guiol.
It is a small success. But it is vital solutions such as these that help airlines transform their businesses to become smarter and more efficient. 1E is glad to be part of that transformation.