Flight Centre calls on NTT for Microsoft consolidation support

Chris Locke (Flight Centre Travel Group)

Australian travel agency Flight Centre has called on NTT to consolidate its global systems over to Microsoft solutions as part of its five-year strategic partnership with the tech giant. 

Signed between Flight Centre and Microsoft, the partnership is aimed at “major” digital transformation, with the travel agency moving most of its workloads to Azure and standardising its usage of Microsoft 365 across the business. 

During this transformation, NTT’s involvement saw it deploy Microsoft 365 for Flight Centre, as well as collaborating with the tech giant to develop a transformation strategy for the travel agency over a five-month time frame. 

Broadly, that strategy includes the leveraging of Azure, deploying globally streamlined digital foundations and establishing a capacity to support growth for the return of corporate and leisure travel. 

The move will see it consolidate its technology portfolio, which was previously across multiple systems and different legacy platforms around the world, over to Microsoft solutions. This includes moving away from Google and Zoom, with the latter being replaced with Microsoft Teams. 

Additionally, the travel agency is also running a series of proofs of concept with Microsoft Virtual Desktop in order to accelerate moving applications off Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and into Azure. 

“COVID-19 has profoundly affected our business and the industry as a whole. As the crisis unfolded, we moved quickly to streamline our operations and reduce costs, which led to us fast-tracking our transformation plans and reimagining the way we operate as a global business,” said Chris Locke, global head of technology at Flight Centre Travel Group. 

Flight Centre is also running a series of proofs of concept using Windows Virtual Desktop designed to help expedite the transition of a series of applications off AWS infrastructure and into Azure, which is Flight Centre’s preferred cloud for the future. 

NTT’s involvement with Flight Centre’s digital consolidation comes almost a year after its decision to dismiss an undisclosed number of contractors, including members of its contract IT contingent, as well as going through a recruitment freeze and deferring non-essential projects.