Lufthansa Systems and IT networking company Megaport unveiled a partnership designed to accelerate digital transformation within the aviation industry, a move claimed to offer benefits around enhanced security and lower network costs.

Megaport noted the combination would see IT service provider Lufthansa Systems move its Global Aviation Cloud from a single cloud to multiple clouds by using its infrastructure for core routing.

Lufthansa’s Global Aviation Cloud is the IT player’s service which virtualises its airline customers’ applications and transitions them to cloud infrastructure.

Steffen Wagner, Lufthansa Systems head of technology centre of excellence, said the tie-up would help “interconnect our global deployments in a resilient, diverse and on-demand way”, adding it was able to “go live with hybrid cloud traffic from existing data centres to Azure and Google Cloud.”

Megaport will supply data centre infrastructure, virtual firewalls and virtual routing it claims will enable Lufthansa to “securely and reliably connect airline customers to its cloud-hosted applications”.

Key advantages from the partnership cited by the pair include reduced network costs, improved performance and better security.