BUSINESS TECH | ANA cuts network provisioning time with cloud hub
The airline uses the infrastructure to support passenger and operational services, including reservations, boarding, customer communications and other systems.
All Nippon Airways Co. (ANA) has reduced network provisioning time by about 80% after deploying a centralized cloud network hub, as the Japanese airline prepares for a projected tenfold increase in global data volumes.
ANA said Aug. 10 that it redesigned its network architecture around Equinix Fabric, a software-defined interconnection platform that provides secure, on-demand connectivity to cloud services including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
The airline uses the infrastructure to support passenger and operational services, including reservations, boarding, customer communications and other systems. ANA operates about 280 aircraft across more than 200 domestic and international routes.
The new architecture replaces a network model that relied on dedicated circuits for individual systems. ANA said that approach had become increasingly complex and costly to scale as the airline expanded its use of hybrid and multicloud environments.
Jun Nakazato, manager of the IT Infrastructure Team under ANA’s Digital Governance Department and Digital Transformation Division, said the airline adopted network-as-a-service to gain greater flexibility.
“Our rapid business expansion demanded a network with unprecedented flexibility. Rather than continuing to expand our existing network environment, we recognized that implementing network-as-a-service was the most effective path forward. Equinix Fabric delivers the dynamic foundation we need to scale seamlessly,” Nakazato said.
The centralized network hub allows ANA to make infrastructure resources available more quickly for application development and testing. The airline is also targeting a 30% reduction in its five-year total cost of ownership.
The architecture enables ANA to connect to multiple cloud environments without deploying additional physical circuits. The company said the setup could support faster deployment of applications and services, real-time operational coordination and further modernization of passenger services.
The infrastructure also provides a foundation for advanced analytics, automation, emerging AI workloads and other digital applications, according to Equinix.
Kuniko Ogawa, managing director for Japan at Equinix, said ANA’s deployment shows how enterprises can add flexibility to existing physical infrastructure rather than replacing it entirely.
“ANA’s deployment of Equinix Fabric demonstrates what’s possible when enterprises evolve how they consume infrastructure, not by ripping and replacing, but by adding intelligence and flexibility on top of a resilient physical infrastructure,” Ogawa said.
The cloud network hub architecture shown in the release connects ANA’s network to Equinix facilities and provides access to AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud through the centralized infrastructure.
Full disclosure: All news articles published on the TechSabado website are written by human journalists, unless otherwise specified. Final text editing is also performed by human editors, with artificial intelligence (AI) used only to assist with additional grammar and style guide corrections..
————————————————————————-
TEN YEARS OF TECHSABADO!
PLEASE LIKE our FACEBOOK PAGE and SUBSCRIBE to OUR YOUTUBE & SPOTIFY channels.
WATCH TECHSABADO ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL:
WE ARE ALSO ON SPOTIFY
WATCH OUR OTHER YOUTUBE CHANNELS:
PLEASE LIKE our FACEBOOK PAGE and SUBSCRIBE to OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
