Back to Air Transport IT Review - Issue 3, December 2009

SITA's Next Generation Data Centres

Meeting business continuity needs through best-in-class service excellence

Today's airlines process an average of 5,000 transactions per second, and each of these transactions - whether conducted via the web, phone or ticket counter - requires access to data. Not only do air travel providers need to access this data quickly and easily, the data must also be stored in a secure, reliable data centre, which is 'always on', 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - all around the world.

This is no small feat - particularly given that the volume of data transactions and data storage requirements can fluctuate dramatically based on the airline, the time of year, general economic conditions and other factors. To meet these changing needs, data centre infrastructures must be fully scalable 'on-demand' - with the ability to ramp up or down quickly in a cost-effective manner.

Going digital

At the same time, air travel is becoming more digitized. Both airlines and airports are adopting next generation air-to-ground communications and digital aircraft management solutions, such as electronic flight bags, which provide an electronic version of the material typically found in the pilot's traditional flight bag.

Next generation aircraft also increasingly function as 'flying data centres' with data communications systems and storage facilities, which must be fully-integrated into both the IT infrastructure and air transport industry (ATI) networks.

More data processed, more storage needed

This is all expected to generate dramatic increases in network traffic, global data transactions and data storage requirements. As IT becomes the critical link between the industry's stakeholders, it will also step up the ATI's dependence on IT and communications technology - not only for mission critical applications, but also for business continuity.

This means that data capacity on-demand, data security, and rapid recovery of critical systems, data and infrastructure following a disaster will become even more essential.

SITA is here to help with best-in-class Next Generation Data Centres, which are specifically designed to meet ATI needs, while providing excellence in customer service.

A clear vision of the industry's needs

SITA Data Centres store core business and operational data for the ATI. They also host applications supporting hundreds of international airports and airlines worldwide - along with more than 200 SITA products globally. In 2008 alone, SITA's Atlanta Data Centre, only one of its key centres, processed 16.1 billion business and mission transactions, excluding messaging transactions.

"As the only specialist in IT provisioning for the ATI, we have a clear vision of the industry's needs for 'always on' IT processing," says Dave Bakker, Senior Vice President, SITA Global Services. "We know that processing, maintaining and securing data is critical to the industry's success. That's why we have made a multi-million four year investment to develop our new Tier 4 Data Centre programme. This investment is part of our ongoing strategy to provide end-to-end service management capabilities and continuous availability. At the same time, it will help us achieve our corporate social responsibility goals related to green IT."

New Data Centres

SITA's new Tier 4 Data Centres are designed to host mission-critical computer systems - offering both fully redundant subsystems and compartmentalized security zones with controlled access. SITA Data Centres managed services, include facilities, network, security and back-up, disaster recovery and 24/7 global infrastructure support.

As part of its new Tier 4 Data Centre programme, SITA will further improve both its flexibility and security by virtualizing its servers and rationalizing its resources in four key data centres - Atlanta (2), London and Singapore. Atlanta will serve as the company's primary production centre and will host dedicated Disaster Recovery, Quality Assurance and Testing and Development, while London and Singapore will continue to support global and regionalized applications.

Other benefits of the new Data Centre programme include:

Reducing costs through virtualization. As part of its new programme, SITA will reduce the number of existing physical servers by 75%. This will help rationalize resources, reduce overall energy consumption, and shrink the organization's carbon footprint.
Decreased energy consumption and using 'green facilities' through data centres that have been designed to maximize power and use energy-efficient cooling solutions. For example, in SITA's co-location #1 Atlanta-based data centre, the cooling system makes use of rain water collected on the roof of the facility supports a million-gallon tank for chilled water.

"While our technology is certainly best-in-class, our solutions are also based on next generation industry standards," confirms Jim Brennen, Senior Director, Data Centre Operations, Global Services SITA. "For example, our data centre processes and tools are based on the framework that the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) for Service Management has established as industry best practice. This means they are fully compliant with a leading industry standard: SAS70 Type 2."

On-demand scalability and rapid recovery

SITA's Next Generation Data Centres are designed to facilitate both on-demand scalability needs and rapid recovery of critical systems and infrastructure in the event of either a natural or man-made disaster. With the use of virtualization technology and standardized solutions SITA will have the necessary Storage, Network and Server infrastructure to meet new business needs and deliver the on-demand scalability upon request for its customers in a cost-effective and efficient manner - without interrupting customer operations.

Rapid recovery of critical systems and infrastructure is built into the foundational design and reference architecture of the new Data Centres. New mainframe synchronization technology now allows a rapid recovery of the associated applications whereas standardized and duplicated environments aid in delivering faster and controlled recovery of systems.

SITA's Next Generation Data Centres are designed to respond to real-time requests for increased data capacity in a cost effective and efficient manner - without interrupting customer operations. SITA can make virtual servers available on-demand in far less time than traditional physical servers, which may take hours or even days before coming online.

Highest level of support

SITA Next Generation Data Centres are also designed for maximum availability - with 99.997% network availability rate globally. In the event of a disaster, SITA has one disaster recovery plan and one global response team, which uses the same processes, the same standard infrastructure and leverages the same monitoring and management tools worldwide. This ensures the highest level of support for mission-critical applications, all around the globe.

Detection and prevention

The best course of action is of course to prevent a disaster from occurring in the first place. That's why SITA has processes, controls and best practices that are designed to take preventative measures detect unwanted events and implement corrective action if needed.

"Business continuity is our top priority, and we are committed to using the combination of people, processes and technology to transform our customers' operational stability," says Jim Brennen, Senior Director, Data Centre Operations, Global Services SITA. "For mission critical applications, such as SITA's Reservations and Departure Control solutions, we now have a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 5 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 4hrs to restore key business processes.

_{Footnote: SITA has partnered with Quality Technology Services, in Atlanta, Georgia to fulfill our Atlanta data centre requirements.}