IRELAND – British multinational telecommunications conglomerate Vodafone has secured a seven-year technology partnership with Ryanair to handle services including online booking, passenger boarding and in-flight transactions for the Irish airline in Europe.
Reuters reports that the two companies said that they had extended an existing partnership for Vodafone Business to support 300 Ryanair sites and some 153 million passengers across 40 countries.
John Hurley, Ryanair’s chief technology officer, said the partnership would provide the airline with the technical support needed to allow it to make improvements quickly.
While no financial details of the agreement have been disclosed, industry sources estimate the contract to be in the region of €40 million.
The deal will result in Vodafone providing a range of solutions covering the cloud, unified communications, software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), Internet of Things (IoT), and security services.
As part of the agreement, the British mobile company will help Europe’s biggest budget airline to speed up the time it takes to connect a new airport or site for use. It should also lead to a faster turnaround of planes.
The company products will be used to manage customer-facing activities such as online booking, passenger boarding and inflight transactions as well as managing the airline’s training facilities, offices and data centres.
Vodafone Ireland chief executive Anne O’Leary noted that “This new partnership agreement not only highlights the strength of Vodafone’s global ICT offering but shows the trusted relationships we build with our customers.”
“By working closely with Ryanair, our technical, product and account management teams in Vodafone Business will deliver against their business and technology requirements,” she added.
Vodafone Business is the mobile operator’s enterprise arm that offers cloud IT services and the connection of unlimited devices on its Internet of Things network for small and multinational companies.
The enterprise entity accounted for 30% of group service revenue in its financial year ending March 31, 2019.
The new contract represents Vodafone Ireland’s largest ever rollout of SD-WAN, a technology that simplifies the management and operation of a wide area network by separating the hardware from its control mechanism.
