Eurowings, Lufthansa Group’s value airline, serves more than 40 million customers as they travel to over 100 destinations around the world. A year ago, Jens Bischof, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Commercial Officer at Eurowings, laid out a new technological vision for the company. Eurowings would begin modernizing its IT landscape with a heavy focus on cloud-first solutions.
A major opportunity presented itself only a few months later when much of the company’s on-premises server farms required updating—an expensive and time-consuming process. These servers handled remote application access and authentication for thousands of external and contract employees. To add to the immediacy of the company’s need, the renewal period fell at the beginning of the airline’s busy season, just as demand for its services began to scale up dramatically.
Many elements of the booking process, including ticket purchases and the addition of extra baggage, ran on these servers. This was the opportunity to explore a cloud virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that Eurowings had been looking for. “The price that our main IT consultant quoted us for a hardware refresh was too high, the proposed contract duration was too long, and maintaining large arrays of on-premises servers no longer fit our strategy,” says Tim Thomer, Enterprise Architect at Eurowings.
“We wanted a cloud VDI solution capable of running modern authentication, and which could match our existing infrastructure in terms of security and reliability. That’s how we found Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop.”
Azure Virtual Desktop is a cost-effective cloud VDI solution that provides the modern built-in security and authentication that Eurowings sought, along with the kind of scalability that businesses with seasonal fluctuations in revenue require. The ability to scale its infrastructure during the off-season will reduce operating costs by over 50 percent. Azure Virtual Desktop multi-session, through which multiple users can access their apps from a single virtual machine in the cloud, will further increase these savings.
“Our apps are fairly lightweight when it comes to processing power,” says Tim, “so it makes a lot of economic sense to have multiple users share the power of each virtual machine we’re using in Azure.”
We wanted a cloud VDI solution capable of running modern authentication, and which could match our existing infrastructure in terms of security and reliability. That’s how we found Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop.
Tim Thomer: Enterprise ArchitectEurowings
Security for every member of the crew
One of the new security changes that Eurowings implemented alongside its move to the cloud was the adoption of two-factor authentication through RSA security tokens.
In the past, a hardware-dependent handshake between the company’s on-premises servers and an employee’s device provided a similar layer of security. With Azure Virtual Desktop, workers are now free to use any device, anywhere.
This makes device-specific security less applicable. In the short term, Eurowings is using RSA SecurID soft tokens, and it’s considering adopting Microsoft Authenticator as more services and employee groups join the cloud.
As the company continues along its cloud-first journey, even more security layers will become available to its Azure Virtual Desktop users. In the coming months, Eurowings plans to transition to Windows Server 2022 on virtual machines in Azure, and it will at that time also implement Microsoft Defender for Cloud and its associated data protection controls.
Updating all of our on-premises servers used to take a couple days each month. With Azure Virtual Desktop, I just click to start the process, grab a coffee, and everything is ready for final approval. It couldn’t be simpler.
Jürgen Förster: Cloud EngineerEurowings
A quick takeoff
The company has also improved efficiency in a number of areas, including improved employee onboarding times and reduced software update time frames.
“Every employee who moved to Azure Virtual Desktop was given a one-page handout that instructed them how to download the client, and then they were ready to go,” says Tim.
“After signing in, their experience hardly changed, except that the services might have in fact run faster because our Azure servers are more powerful than the on-premises network could have allowed for.”
As for software updates, Jürgen Förster, Cloud Engineer at Eurowings, and his team have experienced a dramatic, positive change in workloads. “Updating all of our on-premises servers used to take a couple days each month,” says Jürgen. “With Azure Virtual Desktop, I just click to start the process, grab a coffee, and everything is ready for final approval. It couldn’t be simpler.”
This was the beginning of the company’s cloud journey, and quickly tackling such a large shift alone was a daunting prospect. “It was our first cloud-native project and one of our biggest ever,” says Jürgen “We weren’t that familiar with Azure yet, and I’m not sure we would have met our very tight deadlines without the support of FastTrack for Azure.”
Microsoft FastTrack helps customers envision and deploy Microsoft cloud solutions to meet specific needs. For most companies with existing Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, or Windows 10 or 11 subscriptions, this service is provided free of charge. “We were learning a whole new dictionary of terms as we deployed Azure Virtual Desktop,” says Jürgen. “With FastTrack for Azure, we knew we could ask any question, even ones we thought were stupid, and we’d get a solid explanation directly from Microsoft experts.”
The service, which Eurowings used together with Microsoft Learn, helped impart nuanced, scenario-specific insights to the team. “When we asked about specific scenarios, our dedicated Cloud Solutions Architect highlighted similar circumstances that other Microsoft customers encountered, including the solutions they implemented,” says Jürgen. “He really understood us, our desired outcomes, and how to help get us there quickly and effectively.”
With FastTrack for Azure, we knew we could ask any question, even ones we thought were stupid, and we’d get a solid explanation directly from Microsoft experts.
Jürgen Förster: Cloud EngineerEurowings
A successful launch is only the beginning
Soon after completing the implementation process, Eurowings ran a Payment Card Industry (PCI) assessment. The success of this assessment was vital because it would demonstrate external employees’ ability to securely handle and process sensitive customer payment data with Azure Virtual Desktop. Without a successful PCI assessment, the company’s new cloud VDI services wouldn’t have been enabled.
Thanks to its collaboration with FastTrack for Azure, the first assessment was a resounding success, speeding adoption times for all employees involved.
“We had very high levels of security for our on-premises datacenters,” says Jürgen, “And now, after a number of assessments, we believe our Azure Virtual Desktop solution has met that high bar.”
Five thousand Eurowings employees and contractors are currently supported by Azure Virtual Desktop, and the migration has gone so well that the company is already planning to deploy Azure Virtual Desktop in more business areas soon. A test phase for the adoption of Windows 365 is underway, which could help the company unify its authentication services through Authenticator.
“Moving our on-premises infrastructure to Azure Virtual Desktop was a ‘Big Bang’ moment for us,” recalls Jürgen. “It could have been daunting, but we’re already seeing results with help from FastTrack, and we’re well positioned to start the next phase of our cloud journey.”
Moving our on-premises infrastructure to Azure Virtual Desktop was a ‘Big Bang’ moment for us. It could have been daunting, but we’re already seeing results with help from FastTrack, and we’re well positioned to start the next phase of our cloud journey.
Jürgen Förster: Cloud EngineerEurowings