Using Amazon AppStream 2.0 to Increase Scalability and Agility for Air Canada

Founded in 1937, Air Canada is the largest provider of scheduled passenger services radiating from Canada, flying 120,000–140,000 passengers daily. Its employees, including those in contact centers, cargo, finance, and maintenance departments, used its on-premises VDI to access various applications. The VDI was slow to scale when onboarding new user groups, and buying new hardware for end-of-life systems was becoming challenging. Air Canada also wanted to move away from a fixed- to a variable-cost model, paying only for the capacity it used. “We needed a new solution that was flexible, scalable, and cost-effective,” says Ray Galipeau, director of core infrastructure and cloud services at Air Canada.

When Air Canada put out a request for proposal for the modernization of its VDI environment and another for its contact center, the proposal from AWS stood out because it recommended a single solution for both needs. The airline had been using AWS services for many years, taking advantage of the support and innovation of the AWS team. After evaluating the proposal from financial and relationship perspectives, Air Canada decided to use AWS for this migration too.

For its VDI environment, the airline chose Amazon AppStream 2.0, which provides secure, reliable, and scalable application streaming. The service met Air Canada’s data residency requirements, and the airline knew it could use AWS Regions to scale its global footprint. For its contact center, Air Canada used Amazon Connect, an artificial intelligence–powered contact center that lets organizations transform their customer experience at scale.

AWS also involved Cortex, an AWS Partner, in the migration. The airline had worked with Cortex earlier on its existing VDI. “Cortex and Air Canada work really well together—they are a good cultural fit, and Cortex already had in-depth knowledge of Air Canada,” says Galipeau. “For us, Cortex was not only the system integrator; it is our partner of choice to manage the new environment.”

Working under stringent deployment deadlines, Air Canada and Cortex decided to migrate both environments as one project. The contact center migration depended on the completion of the VDI migration, so the latter had to be fast-tracked.

The airline engaged AWS Professional Services—which helps organizations realize their desired business outcomes using AWS—to work alongside Cortex. Cortex worked on the VDI migration, while AWS Professional Services focused on the contact center.

The team adopted a multiphase approach to migrate various user groups and use cases to the new VDI environment. Considering dependencies between subgroups and business constraints, the team started by migrating user groups such as IT, which could test the solution. Other lines of business followed.

The migration of both environments had been scheduled to take 18 months. However, working closely alongside AWS, Air Canada and Cortex managed to complete it in 12 months in 2022. “Layering in project management from AWS was pivotal,” says Galipeau. “We worked well as a team, managed risks as much as we could, and found solutions.”

The airline can now reduce the time required to add new groups of users by 75 percent and has the flexibility to scale up or down quickly. “We have to be very dynamic in adjusting to our business needs,” says Galipeau. “Having Amazon AppStream 2.0 adds that availability, flexibility, and scalability that we didn’t have before.”

About 3,000 users have been onboarded on Amazon AppStream 2.0, and the number of users continues to increase at a rapid pace. With features of Amazon AppStream 2.0 and Amazon Connect, such as telephony, working from home became simpler, a benefit that users appreciate and that especially helped the airline during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new solution has also helped free up Air Canada’s IT teams, which now better serve the needs of internal users. “We know that if we need to spin up new workstations on a specific date, we will have them on time,” says Galipeau. “So people can now do more meaningful, value-added work instead of following up on the technical or administrative fronts.” Additionally, Air Canada reduced back-end management costs by 60 percent.

Using Amazon AppStream 2.0, the airline significantly lowered the number of operational events compared with the previous solution. Priority 1 and Priority 2 critical incidents, which impact business, dropped by 70 percent, and all events together decreased by 45 percent. End user downtime and events that block connection also went down by 30 percent.

The airline plans to onboard more users to the solution across the enterprise and among its third-party partners. It will also use more features of Amazon AppStream 2.0 as they become available. “We look at the product road map in discussion with the AWS team every 3 months,” says Galipeau. “AWS makes sure that the solution evolves and Cortex supports it. It’s a close collaboration, and that’s what we need at Air Canada to guide us in the right direction.”

The solution has met the airline’s needs for scalability and availability. It will also help Air Canada expand its international operations. “Using Amazon AppStream 2.0 and AWS, we now have the capability to stand up environments globally in other locations,” says Galipeau.