ARC and Wavicle Build Cloud-Based Solutions That Soar with AWS

The new sales data exchange (SDE) powered by AWS provided ATPCO with a faster and more user-friendly and cost-effective data environment, benefiting both IT teams and business stakeholders. The solution’s technical architecture was the key to its efficiency, flexibility, and value.

The implementation uses an infrastructure-as-code model with Terraform, which enables the establishment of infrastructure in AWS whenever it is needed. This eliminates the manual labor involved in duplicating the infrastructure across various environments, thus reducing the time and effort necessary for modifications.

The architecture of the new system also provides flexibility through a three-layer approach that includes raw, standardized, and processed layers. Data from various providers, such as the Global Distribution System (GDS), airlines, and vendors, is easily sourced via the AWS Transfer Family using the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) server and stored in Amazon S3 buckets for future implementations. A highly decoupled data services architecture is built for each module, including ingestion, data protection, transaction processing, and file delivery, making it easy to scale and extend any service with less effort and overhead. All three data layers provide a strong foundation for various users to explore and build future data products as needed.

In addition, the transition from legacy systems to a cloud environment led to significant reductions in operational, maintenance, support, and compute costs. The move also reduced the need for specialized talent to support and maintain the legacy system.

“As a result of this migration to a modern AWS-powered solution, we significantly enhanced ATPCO's ability to quickly respond to changing customer needs and laid the foundation for advanced capabilities like artificial intelligence," noted Naveen Bahatam, associate director at Wavicle Data Solutions.

ARC’s partnership with Wavicle on this project set the stage for future work between the two companies. “We learned a lot from Wavicle’s engineering team that we’ll be able to use to make our systems better in the long term,” Thackston said. “They gave us ideas from their work in other industries that we wouldn’t have thought of, like ways to make it easier to onboard future customers. When we’re ready to do our next project, we’ll ramp up again with Wavicle.”

Going forward, ARC also envisions more work with AWS, such as adding analytics or reporting capabilities. “By building on AWS, we’ve established a solid foundation that’s produced a very high ROI in a very short period of time,” Thackston concluded. “We see some of the great things AWS is doing around AI, and we know our systems will continue to improve over time with their help.”