Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) (“NCLH” or the “Company”), today announced the successful migration of its shoreside technology infrastructure, including its reservation system, mobile apps, among others to Amazon Web Services (AWS). This strategic move makes NCLH one of the first passenger cruise lines to transition its core technology operations to AWS. The Company is using AWS’s proven, secure, and highly performant infrastructure to reduce average processing time, increase availability during peak periods, streamline its operational infrastructure, and enhance the overall cruising experience.
“We are thrilled to be at the forefront of cloud adoption in the cruise industry,” said Georgios Mortakis, NCLH Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer. “Our migration of on-premises workloads to AWS has resulted in significant improvements in performance. This allows us to accelerate innovation and create amazing experiences for our employees, guests, and travel partners. As an example, during our largest traffic event ever for our reservations systems in November 2023, we handled record volumes without any known performance or availability issues.”
Elevating the guest experience using AI
With its shoreside migration complete, NCLH is eager to harness the full potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionise its operations. The Company plans to leverage a broad portfolio of AWS analytics, machine learning, and generative AI services to facilitate rapid prototyping of new features and services. From tailoring onboard activities and amenities to individual preferences to streamlining logistics and supply chain management, AI-driven insights will enable NCLH to elevate the cruise experience.
“By being an all-in cloud adopter, NCLH is a digital transformer ready to capitalize on the agility, scalability, and innovation the cloud unlocks” said Steven M. Elinson, Director, Services Sector at AWS. “We are excited to expand our collaboration with NCLH as it embarks on this next chapter of cloud-enabled innovation.”
A 15-month operation
The 15-month migration to AWS, led by Mortakis and Humberto Pombo, senior director of Infrastructure at NCLH, involved moving over 100 applications, thousands of virtual and physical servers, data center environments, and peripheral server rooms to the cloud. NCLH worked with AWS, which offered guidance and operational best practices with automations, skills, and experience to move outdated legacy systems to a modernized tech stack, bolstering availability, performance, and faster application response times during Wave seasons and high-demand promotional events.
NCLH can now respond swiftly to market changes, customer expectations, and disruption. Disaster recovery is now much more seamless through the use of multiple AWS Availability Zones and Regions for mission-critical applications. The Company has also adopted development, security and operations, or “DevSecOps”, into its software development processes. DevSecOps brings new tools and processes that makes security an integral part of the software development process. This framework facilitates secure coding practices, automates security testing procedures, and mitigates human errors that could potentially expose vulnerabilities.
NCLH’s determined journey to complete the AWS migration within a tight 15-month timeframe wasn’t without roadblocks and dependencies. “Meticulous planning by the implementation team, leveraging cutting-edge technologies and innovative strategies to streamline the migration process, and an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ attitude were necessary”, Mortakis stated.
About Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NCLH) is a leading global cruise company that operates Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises®. With a combined fleet of 32 ships and approximately 66,500 berths, NCLH offers itineraries to approximately 700 destinations worldwide. NCLH expects to add 13 additional ships across its three brands through 2036, which will add approximately 41,000 berths to its fleet. To learn more, visit www.nclhltd.com.
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