Gulf Air, the national carrier of Bahrain, has become one of the first airlines to finalise a key technology upgrade, a report said.

The airline has announced the successful completion of the Oracle E-Business suite upgrade to R12 using its in-house information technology (IT) capabilities, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

The announcement follows a meeting of Gulf Air's acting chief executive Maher Al Musallam and information technology director Dr Jassim Haji with Oracle Corporation vice-president Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban to commemorate the landmark achievement.

"This is another testament to the strength of Gulf Air's in-house IT capabilities whereby our internal resources were utilised to implement the Oracle E-Business suite upgrade to R12, thereby ensuring significant cost-savings," Al Musallam said.

"We have chosen to rely fully on our internal resources where their skills and capabilities have been self-developed to be able to carry out this work.

"In doing so, we have avoided huge cost of these external parties' involvement and were able to successfully finish this project in shorter duration.

"And importantly, this upgrade is in keeping with Gulf Air's longstanding efforts and commitment to implement only the most current information technology enhancements and remain at the forefront of IT developments," he said.
Al Thehaiban said Oracle E-Business solutions had a longstanding relationship with Gulf Air.

"Our work together over the years has developed into a partnership that sees Bahrain's national carrier implement some of the most cutting edge IT solutions offered by our team," he said.

The Oracle E-Business suite upgrade to R12, which enables better security and access controls for the airline's financial functions, was completed in only a few months following extensive planning, testing and implementing on the part of Gulf Air's in-house IT team and was successfully finalised in December.

Gulf Air has consistently been at the forefront of introducing several improvements and innovations in its operations.

In 2012, it became the first organisation in Bahrain to introduce private cloud computing in its IT operations. It has since utilised the latest IT technology to harness 'big data' and perform Arabic sentiment analysis about the airline on social media. – TradeArabia News Service