Delta takes off with modernized blend of mainframes and cloud

“The speed of the cloud allowed us to move from concept to installation and provisioning in six months,” he says, adding that Delta’s cloud shift has also helped reduce equipment purchases and maintenance costs while providing efficiency and elasticity for the applications the airlines runs in the cloud.

Best of both worlds

As part of its cloud strategy, Delta has been moving many analytical workloads and data to the cloud. It has also been exploiting services aimed at enhancing customer service and experience.

For example, Delta IT, which Cincera says comprises roughly 4,000 team members, including subcontractors, has implemented Amazon Connect, an omnichannel customer service center, to enable self-service capabilities such as chat and virtual assist. Such services handle basic customer questions, such as baggage allowance for an upcoming trip, “and maps them to automated workflows to help customers more quickly,” he says.

Delta has plans to deploy AI to automate even more human interactions with the Delta.com site. “One of the most challenging areas is mapping customer intent and then automating the processes behind it, especially with really tricky transactions,” Cincera says. “Working on automating that is a big focus area for us.”

Despite its enthusiasm for the cloud, Delta intends to continue to rely on mainframes for select workloads and recently signed another 5-year partnership with Kyndryl, formerly IBM Global Services, to manage its mainframe applications, such as its reservation and crew scheduling workloads, as well as its CRM system and FAA maintenance documentation.

Kyndryl will also integrate automation capabilities to enable more agility in moving and managing data across various environments, says Brian O’Rourke, a former 20-year Delta employee who jumped over to IBM Canada and is now lead advisor at Kyndryl on the Delta account. O’Rourke says Kyndryl will help Delta re-architect its infrastructure to better harness data for innovative services, and he expects the two infrastructure platforms — cloud and the mainframe — to co-exist for a long time.