Azure & Easyjet in the clouds

The cloud has become even more literal, with easyJet using Microsoft Azure in order to build and trial their new seat allocation service.

This is a shift away from their traditional system of free seating, and so needed to ‘work operationally, work commercially and increase customer satisfaction’.

Instead of buying a seat-allocation-as-a-service from a third party, easyJet developed their own service in partitioned SQL Azure databases and cached in the Azure Fabric Cache.

However one of the real benefits is that building the system in Azure is that it reduced the potential cost of failure, as if customers had rejected the system, the low cost and scalable nature of Azure meant that it would not be overly costly if easyJet had decided not to keep the allocated seat service.

Developing in the cloud reduces the risk of innovation, and enables projects like this to happen whilst remaining cost effective.

In the end, the seating trial over the summer was a success, and easyJet are rolling out allocated seating across their flights, starting in November.

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