âIâm starting to see these companies and startups that are, âHow do you optimize your cloud, and how do you manage your cloud?â Thereâs a lot of people focused on questions like, âYouâve got a lot of data, can I store it better for you?â Or, âYouâve got a lot of new applications; can I help you monitor them better?â Because all the tools you used to have donât work anymore,â he said. Maybe the age of digital transformation is over, he said, and weâre now in the age of cloud optimization.
United itself has bet heavily on the cloud, specifically AWS as its preferred cloud provider. Unsurprisingly, United, too, is looking at how the company can optimize its cloud usage, from both a cost and reliability perspective. Like for so many companies that are going through this process, that also means looking at developer productivity and adding automation and DevOps practices into the mix. âWeâre there. We have an established presence [in the cloud], but now weâre kind of in the market to try to continue to optimize as well,â Birnbaum said.
But that also comes back to reliability. Like all airlines, United still operates a lot of legacy systems â and they still work. âFrankly, we are extra careful as we move through this journey, to make sure we donât disrupt the operation or create self-inflicted wounds,â he said.