One of the major benefits of cloud computing is that it allows anyone, anywhere, to access a service. Business models can be built around such things. One such model involves airline bookings, as run by Amadeus IT Group SA, an online travel services company headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

“If you are serious about open source, you have to use it. You can’t just say ‘nice idea,'” said Rashesh Jethi, senior vice president and head of R&D for Americas at Amadeus IT.

Jethi spoke to host Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick) and guest host Scott Raynovich (@rayno) of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile live-streaming studio, during the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California.

The interview focused on the power of open-source software and the benefits of the cloud for business solutions.

The right cloud for the right application

When Amadeus got its start, companies needed to have their own information technology. That meant a large data center, with smaller centers all over the world, Jethi explained. Today, though, the company is moving toward the cloud using open-source solutions. To satisfy customer preferences, different applications run in their own clouds.

Amadeus uses open source to run a private cloud to hold their customer data in a secure environment. Open-source networking also allows it to scale up for large applications in the public cloud, Jethi added.

Finding the right flight for a customer is no easy task. There are a lot of variables, such as price, time, services, and more. Amadeus has put a lot of investment into finding the right flight, Jethi explained. Customers also help, as their activity trains machine learning algorithms to identify customer preference.

Amadeus intends to do more business in North America, having opened offices in Chicago, Miami and Dallas. The goal is to be close to its customers, so the company can listen to customer needs. This policy has improved its pace of innovation, Jethi stated.

“We’re using this technology, and it’s very real,” Jethi added.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Open Networking Summit.

Photo: SiliconANGLE