In Aircraft Technology - Engineering and Maintenance Issue 113 - Aug./Sept. 2011.

The promise of housing all sorts of airline records in a secure vault in the cloud doesn’t, at first glance, seem much different then storing them in your own company’s database. But take a further look — and some clear benefits start to become apparent.

Gartner Research, The Harvard Business Review and The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have provided reference models on the virtues of a cloud-computing model. Apple, Amazon and Google are building massive cloud infrastructures, and everywhere you look you see articles on the subject. Surely there are efficiencies to be gained and opportunities to promote passenger safety as a culture among the airline industry and its partner ecosystem?

First, let’s define “cloud architecture” as an enabling platform for MRO operations. According to NIST, suitable cloud architecture is about providing everything as a ‘service’. Some think of this as Enterprise Cloud Computing (ECC). So why does this matter?

On the cost side, many but not all IT and data centre costs can be reduced and tied to usage.
On the revenue side, risk and start-up costs for innovation initiatives can be cut dramatically.
The article and accompanying diagrams can be found here, starting on page 96.

Download PDF of the article here.