Airbus Transmits Test Flight Performance Data in Real Time Without Compromising System Security, Scalability, and Performance
 
 

Airbus Transmits Test Flight Performance Data in Real Time Without Compromising System Security, Scalability, and Performance

  • Oracle Customer:  Airbus
    Location:  Toulouse, France
    Industry:  Aerospace and Defense
    Employees:  52,000
    Annual Revenue:  Over $5 Billion

Printer View Printer View

Airbus, a world leader in the civil air transport market, employs approximately 52,000 people at sixteen sites in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain. The company relies on partnerships with major companies around the world and has a network of 1,500 suppliers in 30 countries. Airbus manufactures the A380, the largest passenger jet in the world. It consistently captures around 50% of all commercial airliner orders, and it has approximately 6,700 aircraft in service. Airbus is part of global the panEuropean corporation European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS).

Airbus used Oracle Secure Global Access to provide a dispersed workforce of aircraft designers, structural engineers, and other essential, ground-based staff with secure, real-time access to test results during flight trials. Technical teams no longer needed to travel to the company’s center in Toulouse, and experts have the ability to start to evaluate results immediately. Using Oracle Secure Global Access has helped Airbus accelerate compliance with global aviation regulations, complete tests required by potential customers more quickly, and reduce time to market for new aircraft.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Airbus

  • "Oracle Secure Global Desktop enables us to deliver real-time flight test data direct from the cockpit to any number of designers, engineers, component manufacturers, and other authorized users, regardless of location or client device." – Ghislain Banville, IT Architect, Flight Test Data Equipment, Airbus

  • Capture aircraft test flight results, such as airspeed, engine performance, flight range, stability, plane-handling qualities, wing temperature, and other parameters required by Airbus engineers, potential customers, and global civil aviation authorities to verify airworthiness prior to commercial operation certification or finalizing a sale
  • Make test flight data available in real time to United-Kingdom-based teams who design and build aircraft wings, German engineers who build cockpit and navigation systems, aircraft assembly teams in France, and analysts and technical teams based throughout Europe
  • Enable selected aircraft-part manufacturers to access live testing data for their components to provide immediate feedback and rectify problems, rapidly
  • Minimize time to market and shorten sales cycles for new aircraft in the competitive, cost-driven, commercial aviation industry
  • Enable engineers to collaborate securely on multiple topics and projects with global supply chain partners, while reducing airplane development costs and complexity

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Implemented Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.6 to relay aircraft test flight results in real time and provide authorized engineers and technical experts in all locations with secure, role-based access to the data
  • Enabled approximately 100 end-users to simultaneously access test data from server-based and server-hosted environments, via a Web browser on popular client devices, with secure, single sign-on technology
  • Made test data available continuously and in real time throughout the entire flight, which eliminated the need to manually record results and distribute them to teams across Europe for evaluation
  • Eliminated the need for flight test engineers and test support teams to travel to Toulouse to join test flights, which produced considerable savings in time and costs
  • Cut test-flight program length by enabling engineers to work on performance problems immediately, suggest alternate ways of fixing potential issues, and request retesting while aircraft is still in the air
  • Accelerated time to full commercial operation for each aircraft type by enabling Airbus to rapidly complete tests required to comply with global aviation regulators or requested by potential customers
  • Eliminated the need to transfer sensitive flight test results to dispersed client devices for evaluation and minimized risk of security breaches by managing data centrally
  • Improved scalability to increase user numbers within Airbus as required and extend access to component manufacturers to provide instant feedback on the performance of key parts
  • Extended use of Oracle Secure Global Desktop by replacing Citrix desktop and server virtualization tools used by engineers throughout Airbus to share technical data on multiple topics
  • Switched to Oracle Secure Global Desktop for engineer collaboration and benefitted from environment-agnostic functionality, lightweight application, centralized control and management within the corporate firewall, and improved security and resilience

Why Oracle

Airbus selected Oracle Secure Global Desktop over competitor solutions and open source technologies that could also support the UNIX environment because of the product’s ease of deployment, nonintrusive operation, unrivalled security, scalability, and lower cost.

Implementation Process

Airbus benefited from the solution’s ease of deployment, allowing it to test, validate, and install a basic configuration in three days.