Dell Technologies is helping Ryanair unlock its future growth potential with game-changing technology

Dell Technologies has developed a long-standing partnership with Ryanair, putting the power of technology to use in order to fuel the airline’s success.

Placing technology at the very heart of Ryanair’s transformation has unlocked the airline’s growth potential over the past decade while providing it with the flexibility and agility to overcome the challenges of today.

To best prepare for the future, Ryanair has turned to Dell Technologies and its gaming-changing new storage appliance, PowerStore, which is designed for the data era. PowerStore will move to the very heart of Ryanair’s technological operations, and the company’s future ambitions rest on the reliability of the platform.

“We are putting all of our faith in the PowerStore system and we’ve had brilliant support which is the most important part,” says Declan Costello, Head of IT Infrastructure and Operations at Ryanair. “Even though PowerStore is brand new, we have trust in Dell. We trust what we have seen, what we have tested. Everything relies on it.”

Through the modernisation of its IT infrastructure, Ryanair aims to simplify its website, providing newer and more sophisticated apps, and accelerating digitalisation across the entire organisation.

Growing importance of digital transformation

Digital transformation has proved critical over the past 12 months as the aviation industry has been navigating Covid-19. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the onset of the pandemic has resulted in a 60pc reduction in air passenger numbers globally in 2020.

However, despite the short-term impacts experienced by the sector, Ryanair is focused on the long-term and investing in the technology that will fuel its future growth and out-compete others within the market.

Speaking about the depth of the partnership forged with Dell Technologies at the recent Dell Technologies Forum, Costello spoke about the growth that has been achieved.

“We’ve built our entire digital solutions on Dell servers and that gave us the flexibility and the good baseline that we can build out of to do lots of new things that we were doing. We went from a company of 42 in IT to approximately 400. We went from 100 servers to 2000 today.”

A vision for the future

The trust forged between Dell Technologies and Ryanair over recent years has enabled the airline to unlock new opportunities. By providing Ryanair with innovative technologies and modern infrastructure, the team at Dell Technologies have enabled the airline to modernise every aspect of its business and to support a 68pc increase in passenger numbers from 2011 to 2018.

How is a long-term partnership maintained between two giants in their respective industries, especially in turbulent times? Apart from the dependability of the products themselves, Costello believes it has something to do with mutual trust and understanding.

“We know we can trust what they are saying,” he said of the Dell Technologies team. “They know our business. They understand our business. They understand that we are different from other airlines.”

Identifying areas for improvement

Before partnering with Dell Technologies some years ago, Ryanair had identified downtime as a significant performance risk to the business, incurring large costs to the company from not having planes in the air and with Ryanair.com unable to facilitate bookings. Outdated IT infrastructure also restricted the company from harnessing new revenue streams beyond traditional ticket sales.

“To achieve the customer service and digital enhancements as set out in our Always Getting Better programme, Ryanair decided to embark on an ambitious IT transformation project,” Costello adds.

“We chose Dell Technologies as our partner in overhauling our IT infrastructure to help transform a number of business-critical platforms over recent years, including our primary back-end operational, engineering and safety systems.”

Jason Ward, Vice-President and Managing Director, Dell Technologies Ireland, spoke about the excitement surrounding the ongoing partnership with Ryanair.

“We’re excited to be working with Ryanair to help power their operational capabilities while keeping their business model resilient for the future. Our partnership with Ryanair represents a great example of the role technology can play in helping to drive digital transformation and innovation in the customer experience.

“Dell Technologies servers and software have proven to be a game-changer, acting as a critical platform on which Ryanair can deliver upon its future growth strategy as we transition to a post-COVID world. We look forward to continuing to work closely with Ryanair in the future to help power its future growth.”