Executive Summary
Saudi Gulf Airlines (SGA) faced challenges in improving website performance and creating efficient development environments. By partnering with Alnafitha IT and leveraging AWS’s regional datacenters in Bahrain, SGA adopted a scalable, flexible cloud-based 3-tier architecture. This transition enabled on-demand resource management, cost reduction, and uninterrupted operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The collaboration highlights the benefits of cloud solutions in enhancing application infrastructure and sets a benchmark for the aviation industry.
The Challenge(s)
SGA team had the challenge of installing and configuring a datacenter on the cloud to improve their website performance and create development, staging, and production environments to tailor the SGA application.
If they had to update any existing technology, they had to first check the compatibility with existing on-premises infrastructure and also make upfront payments for upgrades without testing the effectiveness of the system. They were looking for a scalable and flexible solution that would enable them to run updates and utilize computing resources whenever needed.
The Solution(s)
Alnafitha’s experienced technical team went on to establish the details of building an end-to-end production-grade architecture on AWS. The vendor had recently opened a cluster of datacenters in the Middle East located in Bahrain, allowing regional organizations to easily meet business continuity and disaster recovery requirements. By leveraging these regional AWS datacenters, the solutions provider could now build a highly available and scalable application without any hassle for SGA.
Moamen Hany, Alnafitha’s Technical Consultant, said, “We explained to the customer why opting for a 3-tier architecture was ideal for their situation. It offers several advantages for production and development environments as elements such as user interfaces, data storage, and business logic can be worked on in separate modules. This offers developers more flexibility as they can now work on a particular area of an application in isolation, without affecting other layers. The best part is that all tiers are located in the same datacenter and have security embedded, even though the environments are isolated.”
The Results
SGA was impressed with the benefits that AWS offered. They were particularly pleased with the scalability and flexibility features. With AWS, they could invest on-demand as their requirements grow without disrupting their regular operations. They also had the option to stop using a feature if they wished and further reduce costs without affecting any other benefits.
When COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to go under a lockdown, SGA was able to temporarily shut the application and resume it effortlessly once regular operations restarted without any financial loss.
“The freedom that a cloud architecture offered was incomparable to anything we had experienced with on-prem.”
Conclusion
Saudi Gulf Airlines (SGA) partnered with Alnafitha IT and AWS to enhance their application infrastructure, improve website performance, and create an efficient development environment. The transition to a cloud architecture allowed SGA to manage resources on-demand, reduce costs, and ensure uninterrupted operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The implementation of a 3-tier architecture provided additional benefits in terms of security, modularity, and ease of development. This collaboration sets a benchmark in the aviation industry for utilizing cloud solutions and offers a blueprint for other enterprises seeking similar advancements.
