by MTHULISI SIBANDA 
JOHANNESBURG – COMAIR, operator of the British Airways brand and the Kulula budget carrier in Sub-Saharan Africa, is accelerating its digital transformation plans.

This is in line with its mission to deliver seamless travel experiences for customers and help the travel industry regain momentum.

Comair has teamed up with Google Cloud to speed the digital makeover.

Comair completed its infrastructure optimization plans as it migrated six labor-intensive, on-premise data centers to Google Cloud.

The migration of traditional IT infrastructure enables the airline to run key workloads that include important financial data, secure customer records and airplane navigation information.

Comair has also been able to benefit from the security, reliability, and flexibility provided by Google Cloud.

This has helped increase the airline’s efficiency during high-traffic seasons and peak travel times, as it needed to scale to meet consumer travel demand.

Comair believes it also is now better positioned to build a data foundation using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning using Google Cloud tools.

Niral Patel, Director of Google Cloud Africa, noted Comair’s digital transformation journey started before the pandemic. The outbreak accelerated it.

“Also, by accelerating cloud adoption, Comair is able to reduce processing power for its systems and become more sustainable, and more—all on the cleanest cloud in the industry,” Patel added.

Avsharn Bachoo, Chief Information Officer of Comair, said the Cloud was now the foundation enabling businesses to transform, differentiate and gain competitive advantage.

“The sooner you digitally transform, the quicker you’re able to respond to uncertain times. As a result, the digital maturity measures we’ve put in place have helped drive a post-lockdown recovery,” Bachoo said.

Comair has been operating since 1946.

– CAJ News