Database Consulting and Managed Services at the Airport

Database Consulting and Managed Services at the Airport: Maximize Your Database Infrastructure Investment and Elevate Your Passenger Experience

Every day, more than 3.5 exabytes/quintillion bytes (or 3.5 exabytes) of data are created … that’s 18 zeroes. So, what does that look like? According to Backblaze, you would have had to start recording a video call 237,823 years ago to record just 1 exabyte of data.

While the data generated by airports is certainly not that large; it is massive and incredibly valuable to operations – and harnessed correctly can enable airports to gather critical information to monitor and define actions that improve operations and passenger experience from the control tower all the way to the terminals.

And this is where effective database management is critical.

The ability to collect, store, analyze and protect data is a key driver of operational efficiency and decision making. However, managing large volumes of data around air travel is time consuming and challenging, especially for airports with complex operations and multiple disparate data sources and systems.

According to SITA’s 2022 Airport IT Trends report, more than 80% of airports are planning to invest in major programs or R&D by 2025 for business intelligence, cloud services or data exchange technology while more than 65% are considering artificial intelligence (AI).

Why Managed Database Services and Consulting?

Managed database service providers enable airports to realize their IT investments. They are an integral part of your team, offering their expertise, technology, and skills to enhance database performance, enable scalability, ensure a right-sized infrastructure, and provide advanced capabilities to your airport through comprehensive database management services.

• Optimization: Acting as a catalyst to scale technology, reducing delays, downtimes and technical debt, your databases are finetuned to work smarter and more efficiently.
• Insights: With a strong data strategy, airports are able to make more informed decisions that enhance the passenger experience and airport operations by using accurate, reliable, and timely information.
• Sustainability: Oftentimes, the capacity required to absorb peak traffic is overestimated leading to a waste in resources and money due to infrastructure not being used. Continuous monitoring supports airports sustainability efforts as database capacity is constantly monitored and adjusted based on need, leading to reduction in emissions as well as cost savings.

Ensure database stability for optimal performance as data loads increase.

Airports generate and process massive amounts of data daily from multiple sources, such as passengers, flight information, and baggage handling. This high volume of data can cause database performance issues, leading to delays and downtime. This has been seen recently with a major US carrier who suffered significant disruptions and flight cancellations due to outdated software.

Partnering with a database managed services provider helps airports to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, tune queries, and implement best practices for database configuration, resulting in faster response times, improved user experience, and savings.

For example, Global Payments, a financial technology company, engaged Fortified to troubleshoot issues with their My Schools Bucks app, which allows parents to keep track of and make school payments from a mobile phone or computer.

Within a day, Fortified uncovered the cause of platform failure issues and long login times. Fortified solved the problems and improved the app. As a result, Global Payments saw a 300% increase in performance across all layers of their data environment, including Tomcat and Apache, leading to significant reductions in log-in times for users and an enhanced customer experience. Additionally, the infrastructure improvements resulted in cost savings of $1 million.

Managed Database Services:

• Database Administration provides day-to-day management of an airport’s databases for optimization. It includes proactively monitoring database usage, alerting on critical systems operations, fine-tuning configurations (including maintenance and backup planning), performing backups and recovery, and troubleshooting performance issues.
• Database Assessments deliver insights into the health and performance of the database systems, identifies areas of risk and inefficiency, and provides recommendations for improvement
• 24/7 Support supplies incident response to advise and remediate database performance issues

Benefits:

• Improved platform stability and reliability
• Better application response times
• Reduced outages
• Increased uptime
• Predictable response times

Scale your databases for tomorrow’s infrastructure.

The volume of data generated at airports fluctuates seasonally, depending on passenger traffic, cargo shipments, and flights. This data comes from various systems and expands and constricts over time, making it crucial for databases to manage the fluctuating demand in real time while being highly dependable and redundant.

Database Managed Service providers can assist airports in ensuring systems support fluctuating and increasing demand without sacrificing performance or data accuracy.

For example, a large financial firm responsible for over $35 billion in assets wanted to modernize its SQL Server data estate and migrate its servers to the Cloud. They required a highly available and scalable ecosystem to handle varying workloads and global demand.

A data tier assessment revealed the need to optimize their data ecosystem before migration. Fortified provided a stable environment and completed the migration to the Cloud, reducing the number of on-premises servers from 100 to 25 while saving the firm $65,000 monthly in cloud expenses and $2.3 million in licensing fees over three years.

Managed Database Services:

• Capacity planning estimates the computing resources required to support current and future workloads
• Database performance tuning optimizes database performance to manage increasing volumes of data and users
• Cloud migration safely moves databases to the cloud for improved scalability
• Database architecture and design delivers a custom database architecture with guidance on database technology selection and performance

Benefits:

• Increased transactional volumes
• Optimized performance (Cloud design, Migration, Optimization)
• Increased ability for multiple, simultaneous transactions or requests
• Reduced resource consumption and licensing costs
• Enabled analytics environment

Database consulting maximizes infrastructure investments 

Database management consulting optimizes database infrastructure and investments by identifying inefficiencies, improving performance, and implementing best practices to ensure data security, reliability, and scalability.

Partnering with a database consultant and managed service provider helps airports maximize their data capabilities and facilitates data-driven decision making. Their teams are an extension of an airport’s team, bringing in expert knowledge and skills, along with access to advanced tools and technologies, to drive operational excellence.

 Database Consulting Services:

• Business intelligence visualization provides insights into your data using dashboards, predictive analytics, and reports
• Database Architecture services design and build a foundation for all current and future database projects including cloud-based database architecture, database architecture design, and database architecture consulting
• Data movement or ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools enable the efficient movement of data between different systems, merging data from multiple disparate sources and loading it into a central database

Benefits:

• Informed decision-making
• Streamlined processes
• Centralized data management
• High availability / data recovery planning
• Improved data accuracy and consistency

Keep business critical airport data online.  

Airports must ensure their data is secure and meets regulatory requirements in a complex environment where multiple stakeholders, stricter privacy regulations, and more sophisticated cyber-attacks are common.

Database Managed Service providers can help airports safeguard their data and business stability by conducting vulnerability assessments, security audits, and compliance reporting to ensure they meet regulatory requirements.

For example, a major North American insurance provider realized its Microsoft SQL Servers were at their end of life and required upgrading. In just 128 days, Fortified upgraded and migrated 3,500 SQL Server databases and 600+ mission critical applications to the Cloud without losing service for users or app failure. All while cleaning up data, improving encryption, increasing performance and security, and reducing costs.

Managed Database Services:

• Disaster recovery and high availability solutions mitigate risks associated with data center outages or other data disasters
• Data compliance ensures data integrity and privacy per relevant regulations and industry standards like PCI DSS or GDPR
• Service availability and constancy increases the uptime of your database services by designing around security, reliability, and service

 Benefits:

• Faster recovery times
• Minimized downtime and data loss
• Reduced risk of revenue loss and regulatory penalties
• Enhanced privacy with reduced legal risk
• Redundancy plans and backups for rapid recovery

Empower your airport’s data potential with professional database management.

Partnering with a database managed service provider can benefit airports by enhancing their database performance, achieving scalability, and automating routine tasks, leading to cost savings on hardware and infrastructure expenses. This can help airports achieve operational excellence by accessing current data and insights to make informed decisions and allocate resources properly. It can also enable a greater passenger experience and a seamless travel experience while reducing downtimes, safeguarding sensitive passenger data, and preventing security breaches.

By optimizing performance, adopting efficient processes, and utilizing cloud-based solutions, database management services can help airports improve efficiency, reduce expenses, and minimize hardware and infrastructure expenses. Cloud-based solutions provide cost effective, flexible storage and computing resources, easy scalability, and regular updates and maintenance. With a reliable database managed service provider, airports can focus on delivering exceptional service to their passengers while streamlining their data management procedures and lowering costs.

Achieve peak database performance with Fortified.

As the next generation database managed service provider (MSP), Fortified’s personalized and modern data services guide industry leaders along a journey that provides the tools required to unlock the power of your data. By leveraging analytics and automation, we stabilize systems and take on database monitoring and managing responsibilities so that you can focus on your business.

Data is a valuable strategic asset for business success and growth. Our experienced teams collaborate with clients to deliver customized data solutions that fit their specific needs and maximize the value of their information assets. Our expertise in Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Power BI, and other data management solutions ensures that we build tailored engagements that deliver actual results, insights, and savings for our clients.

Fortified is a trusted full-stack IT partner, delivering customized database management services and consulting to businesses of all sizes across the globe. And we pride ourselves in building long-lasting relationships with our clients based on trust, reliability, and a shared commitment to driving business success through effective data management and protection.

So, why wait? Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and take control of your data with Fortified.