Airport Data: Driving the Evolution with Airport Hive and AWS

Airport data is key to a great passenger experience in airports. This image depicts a man accessing flight information on his smartphone.

Azinq believe that freeing up airport data is key to making an airport’s business and operations more efficient and flexible, while also improving the passenger experience.

A recent article by Bob Kwik, Worldwide Head of Airports for AWS: From why to wow: How airports can use data to improve the passenger experience, emphasises perfectly the reasons airports need to make better use of data. It also outlines the benefits of data platforms over a highly structured AODB and overcoming the challenges to sharing airport data.

Bob discusses the difficulties of freeing up airport data, but also the distinct advantages, supporting our vision, and belief in why and what Airport Hive delivers.

Airport Hive has been built by Azinq to transform traditional monolithic Airport Operational Database (AODB) systems. Built on micro-service architecture it provides solid operational performance with accurate, real-time data delivery and management, when you need it, where you need it.

The majority of our Airport Hive customers use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host our solutions because they can easily expand their infrastructure as their needs grow, without the need for upfront investment in hardware or server maintenance. AWS also ensures high availability of servers and consistent performance, with the option to distribute workloads across multiple regions for added redundancy. Currently 18 airports are running over 140 Airport Hive solutions within AWS. This includes Manchester Airport, George Best Belfast City Airport, Glasgow Airport, Muscat Airport, Calgary Airport and many more.

Azinq Managing Partner, Chris Taylor, was delighted to talk to Bob and share his thoughts on Airport Hive and the strengths of deploying on AWS:

‘Our customers are rapidly moving to cloud-based data platforms to take advantage of the infrastructure and data services that AWS provides. Airports have long recognised the value of data to understand and improve passenger and stakeholder engagements, but previously, costs and technical barriers have made it difficult for airports to build data platforms. Azinq’s Airport Hive platform on AWS makes it much easier for airports to get insights into their operations and gives visibility on how small changes can have big impacts, both financially and for the passenger experience. The scalability and elasticity of AWS helps customers avoid the costs and hassles of on-premise implementations with long-term capacity for growth.’

All Airport Hive solutions are designed with access to all data through modern secure RESTful APIs. This provides full ownership and access of the data which traditionally is not the case with monolithic AODBs. This approach transforms the AODB into a rich shareable data source for digital innovation.

We appreciate Paul Courtney, Head of IT at George Best Belfast City Airport taking the time to explain what our Airport API delivers for them:

‘The Azinq API is scalable, highly available and built out in an ultra-modern architecture. It provides Belfast City Airport with a vendor-independent middle layer that enables rapid, secure and configurable connectivity to multiple systems, stakeholders and business partners.’

This endorses Bob’s view on the benefits of airports building platforms to make better use of vital data.

We highly recommend reading the full article: Bob Kwik, Worldwide Head of Airports for AWS: From why to wow: How airports can use data to improve the passenger experience

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