For technologists, airports in general, and the planet’s busiest ones in particular, are like smart cities in microcosm. They encapsulate a head-spinning array of services and applications, covering everything from waste collection and traffic management to private retail and mission-critical controls.
Threading new airports with digital infrastructure and connectivity is a hard task; threading fully operational airports in the wee small hours, whilst they keep planes, passengers and bags in constant motion, is akin to performing open heart surgery while the patient is in full flight. This is a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) analogy, imagined after putting the finishing touches on a $15 million 18-month overhaul of Gatwick Airport’s IT systems.