Managing Of Telecommunication And Networking
Introduction
Telecommunication and networking are the science of long-distance communication using radio, or telephone technology. This involves using PC technology, computer and microelectronic to transmit data between sender and receiver over different transmission media, including coaxial cable and electromagnetic transmissions (Telecommunication Evolution and Future, 2018). In the last few decades, there is remarkable growth in the telecommunication industry primarily in mobile technology. It has become more advanced regarding the speed, system, technology, data capacity, latency, and frequency. For each generation, it has some new standards with new techniques, capabilities and features which separate it from the previous generation. The following section describes the evolution of telecommunications in the wireless industry. It highlights how wireless services give an enormous impact on international commerce and in industrialized nations. Thus, this report aims to contribute to a better understanding of how British Airway manages its technology especially in the domain of telecommunication and networking. And in particular, the type of system and IT infrastructure that helps BA provide fast, efficient and productive interactions with its customer.
The Evolving Telecommunications Scene
The result of today telephone network is from many years of growth. Technology has empowered this evolution to happen, and it allowed many improvements in the performance with constant reduction in the cost of service. Innovation will keep on improve and computerized data to empower a larger data to be conveyed (Vickers et al, 1986). This section will address the evolving telecommunication scene in the airline industry especially in British Airways (BA). The airline industry has multiplied and shown a significant adoption of the Internet, and it has become the biggest single division of online purchases by US consumers (Pappas, 2000). According to Mari in 2010, BA has launched their very first app in different platform including iPhone, Blackberry and Android that aims to help passengers to check-in simply by using their mobile phone, access real-time travel information, and even download a boarding pass into their smartphone (Computer Weekly, 2018). BA innovate according to the evolution of the wireless industry as 2G technology has enabled the application to transfer and acquire data back in 2010. Besides, according to British Airways’ Media Centre (2017) article on BA has turned into the leading carrier to trial self-service biometric boarding on international flights out of the USA, working in partnership with Los Angeles Airport (British Airways, 2018). This new technology is created by Vision-Box to smoother the boarding process for customers, as they will reduce the time it needs to present their passport at the gate. Instead, travellers can face toward the camera prior to boarding and wait for their biometric data to be verified.
Telecommunications for Business
In the past decades, Information Communication Technology has profoundly impacted the way in which business is conducted and the technique the organization competes (Porter and Millar, 1985). Since the 1990s, when the Internet started to grow it has empowered a board range of potential services and applications that managed to improve working efficiency, and slowly but surely these technology developments had led to a new adoption of the Internet. This growth has a significant impact not only on the airline industry, but it has also successfully transformed many sectors from offline business to an online business (Picot et al. , 1997). Thus, the following analysis concentrates on how British Airways has leveraged the Internet Technologies more innovatively and powerfully than its competitors. British Airline invest heavily in new fleets and technology to have efficient and streamlined communications to support swift aircraft turnaround operations. As ground-to-air communications are one of the most essential components of airline operations. It required to provide the ability to communicate between the airline’s flight deck and the operational control centre to avoid any financial penalties associated with schedule delays. Therefore, BA deploys WAVE to extend group-to-air radio communications to desktop PCs (Motorola solutions, 2018). This implementation of WAVE has delivered many potential benefits to BA, as WAVE can smoothly operate on a single IP network infrastructure which makes it more accessible from any location on a range of different devices. This enabled BA to has a flexible and scalable ground-to-air communication capability that helps optimize aircraft operations and leverage existing investment and assets around the airport.
The Role of the IT Department
All companies have an Information Technology department that handles all the technical issues that arise. It is responsible for implementing the infrastructure for automation, the governance for the use of the network and operating system. Besides, it also assists the operational units by providing them with the functionality they need. However, as part of this rapid adoption of cloud services, enterprises can leverage the cloud technologies to standardize and automate a task which can reduce the number of IT organization employees. According to an article written by Mari (2013) on Computer Weekly website, British Airways is focusing on modernizing and optimizing its infrastructure and use its customer data smarter. Paul Cody stepped down as the British Airway's chief information officer (CIO) as the airline merger with Iberia in 2011. The airline IT department is divided into two areas, with Mike Croucher as the head of IT architecture and delivery to lead the department through rapid innovation and changes, and Steve Harding, as the head of IT operations and infrastructure to ensure the data centre is operating efficiently (Computer Weekly. 2018). British Airways has frequently practice outsourcing work to Indian partners as NIIT and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on developing a wide range of application and infrastructure (NIIT, 2018). Therefore, it allows BA to focus on its airline domain knowledge and continuously improve processes with the help of its partner. As a result, BA' IT department can focus on maintaining its IT infrastructure in-house, developing its collaboration tools and email portal to support other departments for collaboration and work closely with the marketing department to help understand customer buying behaviours (Career BA, 2018). However, with few data analytics capabilities in its IT division, yet it doesn't have any big data processing handling in-house. The airline is working closely with third parties such as Opera Solutions, a company that uses mathematical models and data scientists to derive predictive patterns from data and converts them into a business opportunity.
Type of System
There is a different type of system such as centralized, decentralized and distributed application. The following scenario discussed why British Airway (BA) rearchitect its application from distributed application to the centralise application. According to Astute Solution case study, British Airway has a group of customer relation offices responsible in responding to passenger request through communication medium such as email, phone. However, through a review on its customer relations operations, it identified the existing process was lengthy and complicated that redundantly store multiple customer record in the database. It is because BA is using two separate and heavily customise application in the UK and US continents with no formal system in place at some of its other locations.
As a result, this decouple and decentralise system disable BA to has full control over the service recovery activities which led to rising customer relations expenditures due to duplicate claims for the same incident, and less efficient case handling compensation processing. Therefore, BA partner with Astute Solution’ ePowerCenter to deploy an entire web-based application as a centralise solution, enabling the system to be run as a single system on a single global infrastructure replacing approximately 11 non-integrated system and that is currently operating in more than 25 countries. As a result, it helps decreased the total cost of its technology platforms and enabling better cost management and optimization across the organization.
IT infrastructure
IT infrastructure relates to the combination of software, hardware, network and services needed for the operation and management of an enterprise (Techopedia, 2018). The following scenario discussed how British Airways upgrades its IT infrastructure to accommodate the customer's needs. British Airways established their own data centre infrastructure across the region to serve its customers worldwide, instead of using cloud services. However, BA involves many partners to provide server site solution to them to maintain its infrastructure such as allocation space, control, and capacity planning across the region.
For example, BA uses Raritan’s data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solution to manages its data centres across sites near Waterside HQ at Heathrow (Raritan, 2018). However, according to Simon (2018) DA' data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal personal financial information from 380,000 customers who use their services (The Independent, 2018). Back in 2010, BA used to deploy its services using cloud computing services, but they slowly migrate its services back to their local server which causes a lot of problems to include data breaches, server downtime and more. BA should critically consider using cloud computing as many of its competitors are using cloud services including AirAsia has used Google cloud platform to capture, analyse, and report on rising volume (AirAsia Case Study, 2018).
Conclusion
The assembled evidence presented in the previous sections have demonstrated how British Airways manage its telecommunication and networking technology. In short, back in 2009 due to recession. BA strategically outsource to leverage its third parties’ skills and services to constantly innovate as its business growth, therefore its IT department can focus on maintaining its infrastructure and provide technical support to other department including cabin crews, contact centres and engineering. This helps BA cut cost in term of training employee and providing huge investment in research and development to develop innovative product or services.
