SAS - Scandinavian Airlines boosts operational efficiency and customer experiences with Azure modernization

SAS - Scandinavian Airlines has always embraced innovation and pioneering aviation endeavors. Founded on August 1, 1946, the airline was the first to operate commercial and cargo routes across the North Pole, providing faster, more direct flights from Nordic countries to North America and Asia. In 1965, SAS became the first airline in the world to introduce an electronic reservation system. The airline’s co-founder, Marcus Wallenberg, was famous for saying, “To move from the old to what is to come is the only tradition worth keeping.”  

“We’re the flag carrier of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,” says Daniel Engberg, Head of AI, Data, and Platforms at SAS – Scandinavian Airlines. “Today, we serve over 30 million people a year, and we aim to make traveling as easy and comfortable as possible for every single one of them.” SAS now operates 180 aircraft and serves approximately 90 destinations worldwide.

Recently, the airline decided to embark on a comprehensive business and digital transformation strategy called SAS FORWARD, which includes both operational and financial restructuring. SAS also wanted to strengthen its security posture while creating an environment that better supported developers in creating new and better customer experiences. By pursuing these goals, the airline wanted to reinforce its position as a reliable and forward-thinking airline for its customers.

SAS FORWARD represents a bold effort by SAS to adapt to changing market dynamics, enhance efficiency, and secure its long-term viability. “The airline industry is highly competitive,” says Mikael Perhult, Tech Lead, Cloud at SAS - Scandinavian Airlines. “To continue to provide great experiences for travelers, we needed to make big changes.”

SAS FORWARD

The airline’s overarching vision was to have a scalable infrastructure to support all business operations, while empowering its developers to spend less time maintaining the technology infrastructure and more time building modern solutions to support its customers at every touch point. SAS had been using an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution and wanted to work with a technology provider that could set the stage with data modernization and application modernization.

“We wanted to transform the technologies that support and connect SAS’ systems and services for greater scalability, efficiency, and security, while paving the way for innovation for our customers,” says Prakash Ujjwal, Senior Systems Specialist, IT Infrastructure Services at SAS – Scandinavian Airlines.

Collaborating with Microsoft, SAS identified that platform as a service (PaaS) could not only improve security but could streamline and scale operations to better serve its customers. “We already had our services in the cloud, many of them in Microsoft Azure, so moving from IaaS to a fully managed platform was the next step,” says Perhult. “We saw that PaaS could take us to the next level, allowing us to automate back-end processes while providing critical building blocks to respond to demand for evolving needs and new solutions.”

The airline got support from Microsoft in assessing applications, prioritizing workloads to migrate first—considering operational cost, security, complexity, and innovation potential—and determining the migration approach. The airline selected 101 databases and 20 critical applications to migrate first, then chose to use Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure App Service, and Defender for Cloud. With support from Microsoft Customer Success Migration Factory, SAS completed the complex migration quickly, without incident. “We completed the migration from IaaS to Azure PaaS in just 126 days, which exceeded our expectations,” says Ujjwal. 

The airline experienced benefits almost immediately by replacing its older operating systems. In addition, the migration helped in the decoupling of databases and applications, added new native capabilities, and supported easier integration with Azure monitoring and alerting. SAS also gained more streamlined and agile DevOps workflows, creating an environment for continuous innovation and helping the airline modernize and scale its software development and operational practices. 

“Azure PaaS allows faster deployment of environments and services that can be scaled up to meet demand—we’re using elasticity in a much better way,” says Engberg. “We get access to all of this efficiency without the need to invest our own IT resources because the Azure managed platform takes care of it.”

Engberg adds, “Now we have better control over internal systems, better resiliency, and better control over our costs.” This means the airline can dynamically scale resources based on real-time needs. Whether it’s handling ticket reservations, managing baggage, or ensuring smooth flight operations, SAS can achieve optimal performance without overprovisioning or wasting resources. 

Forward-thinking customer experiences 

“With our migration to PaaS, we got what we wanted: greater scalability, reliability, security, agility in managing our IT infrastructure—and greater peace of mind—all without the cost and hassle of doing this ourselves,” says Engberg.

The migration also brought cost savings, allowing SAS to bid farewell to the overhead of managing and maintaining physical servers. The subscription-based pricing model is helping the airline to shift from capital expenditures to operational expenditures. With more financial flexibility, the airline can allocate resources more efficiently. “All of this contributes to our goal of reducing annual costs,” says Perhult.

Perhult also emphasizes that dynamic cloud scaling translates to better service. SAS can proactively meet customer demands, minimizing disruptions and ensuring a seamless travel experience. From booking flights to tracking luggage, passengers benefit from the airline’s commitment to excellence. It’s also setting the stage for SAS to embark on some new initiatives. “With Azure PaaS, we can continuously evolve and build our competitive edge. This is living our mission and the SAS tradition of moving from the old into the new,” Perhult says. 

Engberg agrees, “We are now operating in an environment that fosters innovation. The capabilities of Azure empower SAS to develop new applications faster and focus on what really matters: simplifying travelers’ lives and enhancing their overall experience.”

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