Happier Passengers, Better Service Through Cloud Transformation with AWS

The customer is a leading low-cost airline. As one of the top carriers in Latin America, the airline operates an extensive network serving millions of passengers annually. The company has established itself as a market leader in the competitive aviation industry by focusing on operational efficiency and cost-effective service delivery while maintaining high safety and service standards.

Challenge

The airline faced significant challenges with their legacy IT infrastructure: Several on-premise applications were running on outdated systems, limiting scalability and driving up maintenance costs. Their existing architecture struggled to handle fluctuating demand, particularly during high-traffic periods when system reliability was critical for customer satisfaction and operational continuity.

Additionally, some mission-critical applications relied on outdated SOAP-based communication protocols, creating integration bottlenecks and hindering real-time data exchange and system interoperability. This greatly limited their ability to adopt modern technologies and integrate with third-party systems.

To remain competitive, the customer also needed to promote the adoption of DevOps culture and embrace cloud technologies. Without modernization, the airline risked falling behind competitors, incurring higher operational costs, reduced system reliability, and limited scalability to meet growing market and customer demands.

Solution

To address these challenges, Orion implemented a comprehensive 12-month cloud migration and modernization strategy, planned in two strategic stages. The solution leveraged AWS cloud services to transform the airline’s legacy infrastructure into a modern, scalable, and secure cloud-native architecture.

Application Migration

On-premise applications were successfully migrated to AWS cloud using a re-platforming approach. Applications were containerized using Docker and orchestrated in Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (AWS EKS) clusters, ensuring high availability, scalability, and efficient resource utilization. AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR) was used for secure container image storage and management. Application Load Balancer (ALB) provided intelligent traffic distribution, while AWS Secrets Manager ensured secure credential management across all applications.

Application Modernization

The modernization component focused on transforming several legacy applications by transitioning their communication protocols from SOAP to REST APIs. A reusable library was developed to standardize API communication patterns, enabling seamless integration capabilities and preparing the system architecture for future iPaaS integration. This modernization improved application performance, enhanced interoperability, and reduced technical debt significantly.

AWS Services

AWS services were strategically implemented throughout the solution. AWS RDS and Aurora Serverless compatible with PostgreSQL provided managed database services with automatic scaling capabilities. AWS Lambda enabled serverless computing for specific workloads, while AWS Simple Queue Service (SQS) and Simple Notification Service (SNS) facilitated reliable messaging and event-driven architecture. AWS CloudWatch provided comprehensive monitoring and logging capabilities, and AWS S3 served as scalable object storage for various application needs. AWS Certificate Manager ensured secure SSL/TLS certificate management across all services.

DevOps Transformation

DevOps transformation was achieved through Azure DevOps implementation for CI/CD pipelines, project boards, and artifact management, with self-hosted agents deployed on AWS EC2 instances to maintain control over the deployment environment. Snyk was integrated for comprehensive vulnerability scanning and security compliance, ensuring all deployed applications met security standards and regulatory requirements.

Impact

The migration and modernization initiative delivered significant measurable improvements across multiple operational areas. The transition to AWS cloud containers orchestrated in Kubernetes EKS clusters achieved 99.9% uptime during peak travel seasons, compared to the previous 95% availability with legacy systems. The new architecture automatically scales to handle up to 300% traffic increases during peak booking periods, ensuring consistent performance during high-demand scenarios.

Cost optimization was achieved through the strategic use of AWS services, with Aurora Serverless reducing database operational costs by 30% through automatic scaling based on demand. The transition from SOAP to REST APIs improved application response times by 40% and reduced integration development time by 30% for new system connections.

The DevOps transformation resulted in deployment frequency increasing from monthly to weekly and daily releases, with deployment failure rates decreasing from 15% to less than 2%. The implementation of security scanning reduced vulnerability exposure by 80%, with remediation processes addressing critical issues within 24 hours of detection.

Innovate with AWS Cloud

As an AWS Advanced Tier partner, Orion Innovation helps enterprises accelerate modernization, scale securely, and unlock new value with AWS-powered solutions. With over two decades of experience and 200+ trained AWS resources, our team has dedicated over 400,000 hours annually to deploying cloud-native enterprise application modernization and migration initiatives. We have executed large-scale AWS transformations for Fortune 500 customers across telecom, banking, retail, insurance, government, and aviation industries. Learn more about our AWS  solutions.