Xerox Agreement with AvFinity Helps Airlines Benefit from the Cloud

Technology advancements often mean communication formats and protocols suddenly become incompatible with even longtime communications partners.

So when considering more efficient technology options, the airline IT executive’s first internal question usually is:  How will my airline still be able to transmit all the vital data necessary to keep our aircraft flying?

Xerox (NYSE: XRX) business cloud services are solving this problem by helping airlines share critical information, such as flight plans and passenger details, with aviation agencies and partners domestically and internationally. It achieves this solution by blending its cloud capabilities with the aviation data expertise of AvFinity.  The combination of Xerox and AvFinity allows disparate communications systems to work seamlessly.                      

Built on Xerox’s on-demand cloud infrastructure (IaaS) and AvFinity’s patent-pending software (SaaS) known as AIRS™, the solution seamlessly shares important data and key transmissions from airlines to other carriers.  It does the same seamless communication with vital flight authorities, such as the Federal Aviation Administration, the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

For airlines, this means critical flight information arrives without interruption at its destination and meets each receiving party's format and protocol requirements. 

“There is no room for error in ensuring safety in the skies,” said Ken Stephens, senior vice president of cloud services, Xerox. “Airlines can now leapfrog to the cloud to expedite their communications and do so at costs much lower than maintaining existing mainframe systems.”

Airlines have long relied on legacy communications systems to transmit information.  Yet the skies are projected to become busier as mainstream, low cost and regional carriers all increase in numbers.   To manage that growth, the aviation industry as a whole desires to upgrade the way key information is shared, said Stephens.    

The Xerox and AvFinity agreement facilitates multiple flight-critical services and connects an airline with flight authorities that are continuously updating flight information such as weather and airport conditions.

“Now airlines can draw on the expertise of Xerox and AvFinity to provide seamless transmission of flight-critical communication,” said Doug Perkins, chief executive officer, AvFinity. “Airlines can transition from legacy systems that cost thousands annually to continually patch, and move to lower cost, secure cloud services backed by data communications experts.”

How airlines take control of their legacy messaging

Control is a significant airline benefit provided by the OPEN Communication Hub. Communication among all partners provides flight-critical messaging in all departments, from Operations, to MRO, to regulatory, regardless of the level of technology of the remote airports or the format the particular message recipient requires. That’s a major benefit the single appliance AIRS offers to aviation today.

OPEN Communication Hub Creates Communities

With the OPEN Communication Hub, AvFinity creates a communications ecosystem using AIRS where all airlines that must message one another can interact with each other and a central hub.

The benefits of this interconnected network among members who share common goals are immense. Here are just a few:

• Flight-critical communications become more efficient.
• Communications are controlled by the airline and its members so that the quality of information is assured without the filter of a third-party vendor.
• Changes, which are a constant in aviation, are performed immediately by AIRS without having to hire a team of developers that will spend six months figuring out a solution.
• New airline partners become communications-ready with established airline members immediately upon installing AIRS regardless of their IT datacenter expertise.
• AIRS integrates into back-end systems so that data are accessed without human intervention.
• AIRS handles all data, regardless of format, and sends and receives them regardless of communications protocol or transport media.

Airline Alliance OPEN Communications Hubs Implementations

In today’s climate of airline alliances and mergers, airlines need to make communications changes at a moment’s notice. Achieving that flexibility once meant throwing the problem to a costly team of developers or a legacy provider. Today, airlines can use AIRS’ patent-pending scripting innovation and get instant results on their own.

An example is a North American regional airline that recently needed to send messages in a new address format to its legacy airline partner. With AIRS, the regional found how easily and quickly AvFinity’s patent-pending scripting option provided the solution. AIRS now automatically makes the adjustment with no outsourcing costs, no legacy message providers and no rejected messages.

This same solution is ideal for handling code changes during IT conversions for new partners or alliance members.

Why use an OPEN Communication Hub

AIRS is now installed in about 50% of the regional airlines in North America. Many of these airlines are codeshare partners of major airlines.

AvFinity is currently introducing its Open Communication Hub that addresses the need for simplification, knowledge transfer and collaboration within the logical framework of a major airline and its code-share partners.

With the OPEN Communication Hub, AvFinity simplifies host-to-host and outstation-to-host messaging, data and application communications.

The solution is designed to operate flawlessly within an Alliance’s heterogeneous systems and network environments.

3 Key Challenges to ‘Open’ Airline Messaging

We’re often asked: “What makes AvFinity unique among aviation messaging companies?”

We think three qualities stand out that make us stand out in an industry that has long been offered limited choices.

1. We simplify things: Our communications experts have spent years deconstructing the aviation messaging system in order to better understand its legacy roots and how it functions through today’s cutting edge technologies. As a result of those efforts, we have developed software technology that enables each airline to control its own communications.

2. We transfer knowledge: After deconstructing the legacy messaging system, our communications experts transfer all the know-how on dealing with legacy architectures, disparate systems, multiple protocols and vast arrays of formats into a single box. We call it the AvFinity Integrated Router Solution (AIRS™) and it is a powerful Cisco manufactured router that plugs into a system and goes to work immediately. Its optimal environment is when it communicates between disparate systems. But it handles communications between similar systems with ease.

3. We promote collaboration: Our airline clients are anxious to share their new ideas about how to use AIRS with subsidiaries, code-share partners, GDSs, government agencies and much more. We encourage and assist that collaboration. And we’re proud to say that our clients have developed many really unique concepts like SMS alerts for APIS that were just on wish lists a few years ago.

Linking Aviation’s Legacy and Modern IT

Today’s airlines must communicate effectively with multiple partners using technologies ranging from the ancient to the most advanced. The interaction of these disparate systems can lead to minor or even more severe problems that result in delayed flights that cost airlines money.

The Air Transport Association estimates airlines incur an average of $61 per minute in direct operating costs per delayed aircraft. The total cost to aviation from these delays in 2009, according to ATA, was $6.1 billion. Those statistics further burden an already cash-strapped aviation industry that is simultaneously battling recessionary forces and higher fuel costs.

At AvFinity, we’re working with multiple issues in linking legacy and more modern IT architectures that span the whole range of aviation communications and data integration services. Our approach to solving these issues is revolutionary for its simplicity, cost-effectiveness and immediate results.

Recently, AvFinity was privileged to be part of the solution chosen by Canadian North Airlines for its legacy software issues. The Canadian North team was great to work with and you can read about how it all came about in our case study or our news release.