Amadeus transforms Travel Industry Services with Private Cloud Based on VMware Integrated OpenStack

VMware recently announced that Amadeus IT Group has deployed an enterprise private cloud based on VMware Integrated OpenStack to support digital transformation initiatives. VMware Integrated OpenStack provided Amadeus with the fastest path to supporting VMware vSphere workloads in an API-driven OpenStack cloud.

“Amadeus Cloud Services enables us to be innovative and to really have the end-to-end responsibility for what we are doing,” said Wolfgang Krips, senior vice president, Global Operations, Amadeus. “Stability is one important aspect here, and products like VMware Integrated OpenStack and NSX help us to achieve the level of stability our customers expect.”

Amadeus Accelerates Service Delivery with Enterprise Private Cloud

Headquartered in Madrid, Spain, Amadeus is a technology company dedicated to the global travel industry. The company’s solutions improve the business performance of travel agencies, corporations, airlines, airports, hotels, railways and more. Customers rely on Amadeus’ technology and services across the entire spectrum of the travel experience -- from initial search to booking; from pricing and ticketing to managing reservations; and from check-in to departure. Amadeus’ systems process almost four billion transactions daily, according to the company.

Amadeus implemented an enterprise private cloud to meet the evolving needs of internal and external customers. Customers required rapid access to IT resources and services, end-to-end automation for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), support for next-generation cloud-native applications and high availability for applications and services. The company built the foundation of its cloud on VMware software to address these customer requirements.

The company’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform is powered by VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware NSX, VMware vSAN and VMware vSphere. A supporter of and contributor to open sources projects, Amadeus selected OpenStack because it wanted a platform conducive to agile development. Following a broad review of OpenStack distributions, Amadeus selected VMware’s OpenStack distribution because of its ease of deployment and integration with VMware vSphere and NSX.

By using VMware NSX with VMware Integrated OpenStack, Amadeus has vastly increased its flexibility and its business agility—enabling users to spin up workloads with all associated virtual networks and security services on demand without manual intervention or time-consuming processes. Specifically, Amadeus uses VMware NSX for distributed logical routing and distributed firewalling across its IaaS platform. VMware Integrated OpenStack provides Amadeus with a stable foundation for enabling “always on” applications and services, making use of vSphere features such as vMotion to minimize workload downtime. Additionally, VMware Integrated OpenStack enables Amadeus to leverage its existing resources, skill sets and tools to deploy, manage and upgrade its OpenStack environment without the need for professional services.

Overall, Amadeus’ data center transformation has increased service velocity to internal and external customers. Using VMware Integrated OpenStack, Amadeus has automated the configuration and deployment of entire applications with OpenStack Heat templates to reduce application deployment time from weeks to under an hour.

“VMware is one of our most trusted partners for more than 15 years,” Krips added. “And we are really excited that we are together on a journey toward the new generation of platforms that will help shape the future of travel.”