American Airlines chooses IBM for cloud migration

American Airlines Group said Tuesday that International Business Machines will supply cloud computing services for “select” enterprise applications, in a bid to improve technology efficiency and flexibility. The deal allows American to use the IBM Cloud and partner with IBM to build new cloud-based applications. American may also use IBM’s analytics services. The cloud deal is not exclusive and American may work with other cloud providers. This is the airline’s first large-scale use of public cloud technology. The airline spent much of 2016 evaluating a cloud move,and assessing the capabilities of competitors IBM, Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. In a proof-of-concept period, American asked IBM to build a few mock applications to see how quickly they could be deployed in the cloud, said Patrick Grubbs, VP of IBM’s travel and transportation group. “Days versus months is what you’re attempting to demonstrate,” he said. Now the companies will dissect American’s key business processes, such as buying a plane ticket, to identify which IT systems support it and whether whole or parts of these systems can be moved to the cloud, Grubbs said. American does not plan to move all technology and applications to the cloud, a spokeswoman said. The airline and IBM declined to specify which applications may be targeted first. <br/>