Flying since 1945, TAP Air Portugal is Portugal’s leading airline. A member of the Star Alliance and connecting more than 80 destinations, TAP operates an average of 1050 flights a week.
With a modern fleet, superior efficiency, and low emissions, the carrier is recognized for its operational excellence, innovation, and sustainability, playing a crucial role in promoting Portuguese tourism and economy.
TAP strives for rationalization and cost efficiency, favoring excellence-driven manufacturers willing to work towards continuous improvement and increased productivity. In this context, the migration to Generation 2 of Exadata Oracle Cloud@Customer is an opportunity for operational optimization.
Ensure migration to Exadata Oracle Cloud@Customer Generation 2
In 2019, TAP was a pioneer in adopting the first generation of Oracle Cloud@Customer, an on-premises private cloud solution. The choice of a private cloud solution was based, among other advantages, on faster access to information, enhanced data security, reduced latency times, and greater information privacy while maintaining all the facilities and functionalities of the Oracle public cloud.
To avoid hardware obsolescence, ensure manufacturer support, and maximize the added value of this innovative technology, TAP opted to migrate to Generation 2 of Oracle Cloud@Customer at the end of 2023, placing the carrier at the forefront of technology.
During this migration, it was essential to guarantee the operation of all systems and ensure the connection to partners and suppliers, which are an integral part of business processes, to comply with legal obligations related to the aviation industry. It was also necessary to guarantee the operation and maintenance of segregated environments for development, testing/quality, and production.
A migration project without business downtime
As an Oracle partner with over 20 years of experience implementing this manufacturer’s technology and having already implemented and managed Generation 1 of this solution, Oramix was the integrator chosen by TAP to support its internal infrastructure team.
To meet the challenge, Oramix allocated a multidisciplinary team with strong skills in key project areas: architecture and migration of network and data infrastructures, performance of Oracle databases and Linux operating systems, GoldenGate, and automation.
TAP, Oramix, and Oracle teams drew up a strategic plan to optimize the migration to Generation 2 of Oracle Cloud@Customer within the defined timeframe and without system downtime.
Initially, the manufacturer was responsible for preparing the necessary hardware and ensuring that all the components were correctly configured for the planned migration.
In collaboration with TAP’s technical team, Oramix positioned itself as a strategic partner in redesigning the architecture of the existing network infrastructure, guaranteeing the migration of data between solutions, conducting rigorous tests to validate the implementation, and ensuring that the various stages of the project were completed within the established deadlines.
During the migration, two data infrastructures were maintained in parallel to guarantee data redundancy and availability.
Main benefits of this migration
The evolution of Oracle technology allowed TAP to consolidate the implementation of applications and databases in a high-performance cloud infrastructure without the challenges of the public cloud while also ensuring the integration of hardware and software backups.
The solution provides high levels of service, performance, availability, and flexibility, which are essential for ensuring the high availability of databases and the continuity of the carrier’s business.
“The evolution to Generation 2 of Oracle’s Cloud@Customer reinforces the robustness, security, and performance of TAP’s databases, a strategic decision focused on the continuous improvement that guides our positioning in the market,” says Nelson Cardoso, IT Manager at TAP.
The solution implemented strengthened the capacity for phased growth, in line with the business’s expected needs. The migration to Generation 2 of Oracle Cloud@Customer Exadata allows TAP to scale its infrastructure more efficiently.
“Throughout this migration, TAP and Oramix teams worked closely together,” says Paulo Toscano, Head of TAP’s DBA team. “This made it possible to meet the deadline set for the migration without the business teams experiencing any changes or breaks in the performance of the applications used in day-to-day operations,” adds Paulo Toscano.
To mitigate any situations that might jeopardize the normal running of the business, Oramix assumed responsibility for providing 24×7 technical support services after the migration was completed.
Oracle technology featured in this project:
Hardware:
Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer Geração 2,
ZFS,
ZDLRA.
Software:
Database RDBMS (Multitenant),
RAC,
RMAN,
Active DataGuard,
GoldenGate,
Oracle Entreprise Manager.
Licensing and Maintenance of Oracle technology
Universal Credits
About TAP Air Portugal
TAP is Portugal’ s leading airline and is a member of Star Alliance since 2005. Flying since 1945, TAP Air Portugal has its hub in Lisbon, a privileged access platform in Europe, at the crossroads with Africa, North, Central, and South America.
TAP Air Portugal is the world’s leading airline between Europe and Brazil. This winter, TAP is offering more than 1,050 flights a week to 80 cities in 30 countries through its network of destinations, which comprises six airports in Portugal, 10 in North America, 12 in Central and South America, 13 in Africa and the Middle East and 39 in Europe (in addition to Portugal).
TAP has made a clear commitment to modernizing its fleet and offering the best product in the sector to its customers. The Portuguese airline operates one of the youngest fleets in the world, with all of Airbus’ next generation NEO aircraft: A320neo, A321neo, A321LR, and A330neo, with superior efficiency and reduced emission levels. TAP also operates 19 Embraer aircraft in its regional fleet (TAP Express).
TAP is considered by Airline Ratings to be the safest airline in Europe and the sixth safest in the world.
TAP Air Portugal has been recognized and awarded as Europe’s Leading Airline to Africa, as well as Europe’s Leading Airline to South America by the World Travel Awards in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
