Amazon Web Services has announced that Ryanair is moving its infrastructure to AWS – going all-in  to transform the digital experience for its over 130 million customers, and plans to close the vast majority of its data centres over the next three years.

The leading European airline already runs several core production workloads on AWS, such as Ryanair Rooms and Ryanair.com, and is building a company-wide data lake on Amazon S3, leveraging Amazon Kinesis to gain deeper insights from customer and business data.

Ryanair is rebuilding and transforming legacy systems into cloud based, innovative customer travel services by standardizing on various AWS services, including AWS databases, analytics, machine learning, and deep learning services.

With AWS, Ryanair is able to rapidly innovate, optimise costs, deploy globally, and become a more agile organisation in the cloud. After Ryanair rebuilt Ryanair Rooms on AWS, its customers can now easily compare millions of hotel deals and accommodations without interruption or delays.

Ryanair is working with the AWS ML Solutions Lab to create an application that enables the company to automatically detect surges in demand for flight segments and anticipate schedule changes.

In addition, by migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to Amazon Aurora, Ryanair can now run one of the largest email marketing campaigns in Europe with higher performance at a fraction of the cost, sending out 22 million emails daily to customers about travel bookings or sales events.

“We’ve chosen to work with the world’s leading cloud to develop and deliver services that will transform our customers’ travel experiences. By rebuilding core applications, converting data into actionable insights, and creating intelligent applications, we are putting the solutions in place to continue our leadership in the travel industry,” says John Hurley, chief technology officer at Ryanair.

“Machine learning is hugely important to our growth, and we’re pursuing a variety of AWS machine learning services, including Amazon SageMaker, to enhance customer UI experience and personalize the MyRyanair portal for every unique traveller. We’re currently trialling Amazon Lex to enhance our customer support experience, by intelligently routing customer support requests to the right type of assistance -whether that be a customer support representative or an artificial intelligence-driven interaction.”

“We were also one of the first companies in Europe to support Amazon Alexa, and created the MyRyanair skill for Amazon Alexa to handle account booking, flight inquiries, and frequently asked questions.”

“Leaders in the airline industry, like many large enterprises, are using AWS in a meaningful way to evolve their businesses and innovate on behalf of their customers. They’re deploying new applications to the cloud by default, and looking to migrate as many of their existing applications as they can as quickly as possible,” says Mike Clayville, vice president, Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS.

“Because we have the most comprehensive set of cloud services, including our leading machine learning and deep learning services, Ryanair will be able to employ those services to drive greater customer and employee satisfaction. We’re excited to help them create first-class experiences on AWS as they continue to use our capabilities and services at an accelerated pace.”

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