Thai Airways gains altitude with AI-native networking platform

As part of its strategy of digital transformation and growth, Thai Airways has deployed wired and wireless network upgrades from Juniper Networks across its headquarters, using purpose-built AIOps – artificial intelligence for IT operations – capabilities to enable its continued expansion and achieve better simplicity, productivity and consistent performance at scale to deliver exceptional end-to-end operator and user experiences.

Being Thailand’s national carrier and offering a strategically located flight hub and gateway to Asia, Thai Airways is regarded as one of the world’s top airlines, boasting that it is renowned for its hospitality and services across an extensive global network. With a vision to implement better processes for improved operations and workflow, while also enhancing the customer experience when researching, booking and managing flights online, the airline has embarked on a digital transformation

To maintain its reputation while meeting surging demand for post-pandemic travel, the airline is said to have recognised its corporate network as a key strategic component of its planned business growth. To that end, it is modernising the network infrastructure of its headquarters in Thailand by deploying Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform to deliver the right data, the right real-time response, and the right infrastructure for reliable, measurable and secure wired and wireless services.

In the process of embarking on the overhaul and upgrade of its network solutions, the airline has become the first organisation in Thailand to deploy Wi-Fi 6E through the use of Juniper AP45 access points, alongside Juniper EX Series Ethernet switches for its core, distribution and access networks. 

The deployment is being driven by the Mist AI platform, which uses purpose-built AIOps trained on nine years of insights and data science development to deliver insights into user experiences and proactive fault resolutions that are said to reduce network-related trouble tickets by up to 90%.

In unifying the end-to-end management of Thai Airways’ wired and wireless networks, Juniper’s Mist Wired and Wireless Assurance cloud services were implemented to enable efficient operations of its business-critical systems. These are said to require minimal human intervention while ensuring every connection is reliable, measurable and secure for every device, user, application and asset.

In addition, the Marvis Virtual Network Assistant is allowing the airline’s IT team to detect and resolve networking issues through a conversational interface, determining the root cause of issues, providing proactive insights and suggesting prescriptive actions. This is said to have resulted in a significant decrease in issues and user complaints since the upgrades, ultimately reducing the overall time required for network operations by Thai Airways.

Juniper believes the net result for Thai Airways is that it can now focus efforts on delivering stronger value, services and outcomes for its customers, allowing its IT team to continue delivering “exceptional” end-to-end operator and user experiences. This is seen as especially advantageous as the airline explores extending the roll-out of the new tech solutions to its hubs at Thailand’s two major international airports, deployments which could potentially surpass the scale of the current deployment at its head office.

“Slow, unreliable Wi-Fi was previously hampering productivity and efficiency at our Bangkok head offices, but the upgrades have turned networking complaints into compliments,” commented Tana Kantipan, team lead for network and cyber security at Thai Airways.

“With the Juniper solution, we are now also able to unify management of our wired and wireless networks through an industry-leading, cloud-native solution purpose-built to leverage AIOps. Enabled by Juniper, we are excited to continually uplift the user experiences of our operators and customers alike, as Thai Airways continues to grow and soar into the skies internationally going forward.”