What's Happening?
Flight Centre is working to streamline its cloud subscriptions across its global operations to cut costs and adapt to anticipated challenges in the travel sector. The company currently manages around 200 cloud subscriptions across its 34 brands worldwide.
Geoff Jubb, the DevOps and observability lead, mentioned at the Gartner Infrastructure Summit that the company aims to reduce this number. Although specific targets were not disclosed, Jubb emphasized the need to consolidate technology resources accumulated through acquisitions and global expansion. The initiative is part of a broader strategy to standardize technology environments, enabling a more flexible global workforce. The company has also completed a modernization program, replacing smaller observability systems with Datadog’s SaaS-based platform, which has improved incident response times.
Why It's Important?
This move is significant as it reflects Flight Centre's efforts to manage operational costs and improve efficiency in a challenging travel industry landscape. By reducing cloud subscriptions, the company aims to decrease its tech debt and optimize resource usage. This strategy could lead to cost savings and better resource allocation, which are crucial for maintaining competitiveness in the travel sector. Additionally, the shift towards a more standardized and observable technology environment can enhance the company's ability to respond proactively to system events, potentially improving service reliability and customer satisfaction.
What's Next?
Flight Centre will continue to work on consolidating its cloud resources while navigating governance restrictions in different jurisdictions. The company aims to establish centralized technology strategies that comply with local regulations while maintaining global standards. This approach may involve further technology upgrades and process improvements to support a 'follow the sun' operational model, allowing for seamless global operations. Stakeholders, including employees and partners, may need to adapt to new systems and processes as the company implements these changes.
