Case Study: Southwest Airlines achieves 6‑day‑to‑1‑hour server provisioning and a scalable, high‑performance online platform with Pivotal

Southwest Airlines Transforming IT and development for the world’s largest airline website

Southwest Airlines, the U.S. carrier with the largest domestic passenger base and one of the busiest airline websites, faced rapid growth that strained its IT and development processes. With more than 80% of passenger revenues booked via Southwest.com, the company needed to modernize infrastructure and re-engineer application delivery to scale globally while preserving its low fares and high customer service standards.

Southwest partnered with Pivotal to deploy Pivotal tc Server and Pivotal GemFire, modernizing application servers and distributed data management to boost scalability, performance and reliability. The new platform enabled a move to global virtualization (0→40% in under two years), cut server provisioning from six days to one hour, supported a new mobile and social media strategy with millions of visits, and smoothed the AirTran integration—delivering faster development and more resilient customer-facing services.

Southwest Airlines