Indra Sistemas‘ iTEC Cloud brings modern cloud computing technology into air-traffic management, allowing iTEC partners to address business challenges from the right angle.
Air navigation service providers face an environment that is growing more complex in recent years. The Single European Sky initiative defines clear targets for each country to improve their performance on cost, delays, the environment and safety. ANSPs have had to deal with the new challenges from the changes in airspace regulation and the evolution of their businesses.
These factors are putting new technologies in the spotlight as enablers through which to provide flexible, scalable and robust solutions in air-traffic management.
The iTEC International Collaboration is a long-term agreement to develop advanced ATM systems using common supplier Indra. Current iTEC partners include ENAIRE, NATS DFS and LVNL. Its goal is to develop a high-end ATM system for busy and complex airspace that meets the SESAR requirements and enables significant steps forward in productivity.
This latest-generation system – the iTEC ATM system – is based on aircraft trajectory prediction that allows air traffic to be managed in a safe, fluent and efficient way, offering pilots the ability to optimise the route to their destination. Indra moves ATM business forward with iTEC Cloud: a complete new concept targeted to provide the right answer to the new challenges.
Services from the cloud
Based on Indra experience in ATM systems domain and IT technology, iTEC Cloud provides the answer to the coming demand of software as a service (SaaS) for ATM.
iTEC Cloud will be based on iTEC software to allow a selection of the capabilities required by each specific domain. It will be based on the following key architectural principles:
- the software layer is completely independent from supporting hardware and facilities.
- users work with remote thin clients while processing is performed at centralised servers.
An iTEC solution tailored to each business reality
The flexibility, scalability and high-availability features supported by iTEC Cloud will allow different possibilities to provide ATM services to potential customers:
- using customer-owned infrastructure and facilities (internal Cloud)
- housing the iTEC virtualised software in the infrastructure of a third party
- using Indra’s Cloud Hosting (Indra Flex-IT Suite)
- a combination of the above in order to cope with spikes in capacity due to seasonality and business continuity/disaster recovery plans.
These models facilitate the offering of global business experience to allow customers to concentrate on their core business.
Benefits with iTEC Cloud
iTEC Cloud service provisioning offers customers a tailored solution that delivers advantages through cloud computing design:
- service capacity based on demand: fitting with air-traffic environment trends such as seasonality
- flexible pricing model: clients are invoiced based on their real service consumption, optimising opex
- resource pooling: allowing different customers to share a common infrastructure while logically secured and segmented
- service monitoring: for optimal use of resources
- delocalised infrastructure resources
- dynamic provisioning: reducing time-to-market and allowing companies to react pre-emptively
- guaranteed safety and security.
These factors allow ANSPs to optimise operational costs and simplify maintenance and support while ensuring full compliance with current regulations.
Targeted for new challenges
The iTEC Cloud concept opens up new business opportunities in the ATM market, such as providing infrastructure solutions to ANSPs willing to deploy and use an internal cloud, supporting different IT services; developing an iTEC Cloud to provide iTEC software-based services to consortiums; and being able to provide services based on iTEC software to ANSPs, airports, airlines and all other entities requiring such solutions.
