INDUSTRY WATCH
ABOUT
Saudi Arabian Airlines started out in
1945 with a single twin-engine DC-3
(Dakota) HZ-AAX given to King Abdul
Aziz as a gift by the US President
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Saudi Arabian Airlines, operating as
Saudia, is the flag carrier airline of
Saudi Arabia, based in Jeddah. The
airline reverted to its abbreviated
English brand name Saudia from
Saudi Arabian Airlines in 2012, when
the name was changed to celebrate
the company’s entry into the SkyTeam
airline alliance and in accordance with
a larger rebranding initiative.
The airline operates domestic and
international scheduled flights to
over 120 destinations in the Middle
East, Africa, Asia, Europe and North
America. Today Saudi Arabian Airlines
has over one hundred and thirty-nine
(139) aircraft, including the latest
and most advanced wide-bodied jets
presently available: B747-400s, B747300s, B747-100s, B777-200s, Airbus
A300-600s, MD-11s and MD90s.
The airline’s main operational
base is at Jeddah-King Abdulaziz
International Airport (JED). Other
major hubs are Riyadh-King Khalid
International Airport (RUH), and
Dammam-King Fahd International
Airport (DMM). The new Dammam
airport was opened for commercial use
on 28 November 1999.
One of the major deliverables of this
project was the establishment of robust
business intelligence technical platform
with complete BI stack and capabilities.
From an infrastructure perspective, the
solution is architected as a virtualised
environment with a data warehouse
appliance at the back end, featuring
high availability, redundancy and
scalability.
Regarding the implementation of
SV Insight, its flexible platform and
technology enabled us to thoroughly view
the airline’s performance with a push of a
button, empowering the decision making
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with timely and relevant information.
The self-service solution is a powerful,
yet flexible tool, which brought an
unprecedented level of business visibility to
the airline.
From the software perspective, the solution
features many services that act as business
enablers, as well as reduced the time-tobusiness delivery. Since the introduction
of SV Insight the amount of available
information has increased almost ten-fold
in less than 18 months and we are still
integrating more and more information
sources as we go.
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