A:  style="text-align: justify;">Previously, IT used to be doing more with less. Moving ahead, it would be doing even more with even less (Laughs). For an airline like ours, the basic fundamental is to keep the business moving ahead in a safe and secure way. So there is no getting away from the fact that we have to spend money on the business and the IT needs to keep systems in support and maintain them on a continuous basis.

After 9/11, we have invested a lot in our website (ba.com) and in customer systems. We also put huge money for airport operational systems at Terminal 5 of the Heathrow airport.

Remember that we are an industry that is governed by oil prices. A few months back, the oil price per barrel went up to $145 per barrel and now it is $40 per barrel. So we already have had a warm-up to the recession.

So when we look at key priorities, the primary objective is to keep things going. However, we also looked at specific projects and their returns in the current year and how our customers accepted it. If the acceptance was poor, we canned several key projects.

For example, we had a strong need to buy an ERP system to replace the existing legacy ones. I convinced the airline management, but when we gathered in September last year to look at this initiative, we realised that it would cost us a huge amount of money. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that we had to postpone this deployment because it was a long-term investment that would not pay us back immediately.

Making priorities is a key tool for CIOs during these times. We made a choice of investing in capabilities that would go live in ba.com that would help us in selling hotel rooms, car rentals and stuff like these, that would deliver quick money into the top and bottom line.

I am also a member of the company’s external ‘spend challenge group’ that looks at the overall airline expenditure and monitors whether any penny going out of the door is necessary or not. And we talk to all our suppliers on this issue and it doesn’t matter if it’s a Boeing or Airbus or Rolls Royce or Oracle or whoever.

A:  style="text-align: justify;">One project that is high on the priority list is to phase out the legacy environment that is being used for years. This is an environment where all airlines run their core system called as Transaction Processing Facility or TPF which is a critical information management system. The technology in use has existed since the launch of Boeing 747-100 that was introduced in 1967. There are many applications and processes that are running on this system and these need to be removed. We have to do this in order that the airline business is safe and secure.

The second area where we would continue to invest is in our online capabilities i.e. ba.com. The website was one of the main reasons that helped us fight back after 9/11. We switched to selling online which drastically cut our distribution costs as we didn’t have to pay any third party for selling tickets. In addition, the website helped us to gain a direct relationship with the customer.

We have already introduced online check-in and a self service kiosk at Terminal 5 of the Heathrow airport. Today, 75 percent of the customers check in either online or use the self service kiosk. Moving ahead, we would be launching something called as a ‘Dynamic Packaging’ tool for our ancillary business like hotels and car hire.

We recently launched Metro Twin, a social networking site, where passengers travelling between London-New York-London post their travel experience, queries and responses. The aim is to produce a community that discusses and reviews restaurants, bars, shops and places to stay in these two cities. It doesn’t sell anything but it takes people who know most about these cities to tell others about it.

I think recession or no recession, there are exciting opportunities offered by the online world. In our business our goal is to delight customers and at the same time reduce costs.

A:  style="text-align: justify;">We are still in the process. Anybody saying that they are using SOA make all eyes light up (Laughs). What we are doing is re-architecturing the ba.com website. We have built the website in many components and are turning these components into genuine services. Once this happens, we are building new elements consistently.

This is exciting because it enables two-way communications like Metro Twin as discussed earlier and it also enables to break down and build up the online experience where one could bring in third party services. For example, we started a new airline called OpenSkies which provides services between New York, Paris and Amsterdam. OpenSkies is a subsidiary of BA and we launched it deliberately as a separate company.

What we did here is when a customer goes to the OpenSkies website, he/she can also use services of the BA website like getting BA miles etc. This has been done using SOA. A lot of people can talk about SOA theory but executing it is a tough job.

The media has reported that we are talking with Spain’s Iberia Airlines for a merger and also have filed antitrust immunity with American Airlines and Iberia that would allow us to work together on pricing and scheduling for flights across the Atlantic. All of these things may or may not happen but if they do, within the airline environment, we can genuinely implement SOA. This is going to make it easier to link things up and make processes work together which otherwise would have taken years with millions of pounds spent.

We are well on the road and sometime next year we should be done with the re-engineering process.

A:  style="text-align: justify;">Our IT spend is small (laughs aloud). We spend over 200 million pounds annually which is about 2 percent of the turnover. I have reduced the IT operations spending and the cost of running technology by 45 percent since 2001. We have done this through smart use of technology and also through the help of our partners like NIIT Technologies.

A:  style="text-align: justify;">It is a great challenge. Choosing the right partners and the right solutions and at the same time saving costs is crucial.

There will be a lot of challenges for the transportation and aviation industry. Already, since the time of the oil price rise, around thirty airlines have gone out of business around the world. It is really important to structure your business in the right way, get your costs down and recognise that in this business customers have a choice. So retaining customers and offering them excellent services at the right price is the job of technology. In this industry, IT will always have to serve the business.

A:  style="text-align: justify;">I wish I can think of something good again. People always ask me this and I keep trying to find something new but I can’t come up with anything new. When I took over IT, there was a tendency in the department to look at nothing beyond technology.

The IT teams should remember that we are not a research agency. Our core responsibility is to provide technology to the airline business. There is nothing that frustrates your partners in the business more than the IT people who do not talk their language. This is where the saying came from and it has kept resonating since then.