Amadeus Accelerates Travel Tech with Azure Ampere Altra Arm-Based Instances

Travel technology leader Amadeus transformed its cloud infrastructure by migrating compute-intensive workloads to Ampere Altra Arm-based instances on Microsoft Azure. This strategic initiative harnessed the performance and sustainability advantages of Arm64 architecture through a phased hybrid approach, integrating both x86 and Arm64 nodes within OpenShift clusters. The results include up to 47% better performance/price ratios while advancing the company’s scalability and environmental goals. This case study demonstrates how heterogeneous cloud architectures address evolving demands in global travel technology infrastructure.

Industry Pressures Driving Cloud Modernization

Amadeus, processing billions of travel transactions annually, faced escalating computational demands from its distributed C++ applications powering real-time search and shopping functions. Traditional x86 infrastructure strained under growing performance requirements while increasing energy consumption conflicted with corporate sustainability targets. Rising cloud costs further necessitated optimization across their containerized environment, which leveraged Red Hat OpenShift. These converging challenges demanded a fundamental rethinking of compute architecture to maintain competitive responsiveness.

Strategic Integration of Azure Ampere Altra Arm-Based Instances

Amadeus adopted a dual-path migration strategy to deploy Ampere’s Cloud Native Processors on Azure. First, they implemented Azure Virtual Machines with Ampere Altra Arm-based processors for production workloads, leveraging architectural consistency with their existing on-premises Ampere systems used for continuous integration and testing. This hybrid model reduced migration risks by validating application compatibility before cloud deployment. Crucially, their OpenShift clusters evolved into heterogeneous environments where Kubernetes could dynamically schedule application pods across both x86 and Arm64 (Ampere Altra) nodes.

The Hybrid Migration Architecture

• Consistent Environments: Identical on-premises Ampere servers accelerated validation by mirroring Azure Dpsv5 and Epsv5 series specifications
• Workload Segmentation: CI/CD pipelines remained on-premises while production traffic shifted to Azure Ampere VMs
• Synchronized Operations: Unified tooling and processes bridged hybrid environments through shared OpenShift management planes

Performance and Economic Breakthroughs

Rigorous benchmarks revealed transformative results after migrating travel search workloads. Ampere Altra delivered 47% improved performance/price ratios versus previous x86 instances while maintaining competitive latency profiles – mean response times increased by just 11% despite substantially higher throughput. Specific workloads saw even greater gains, with 50% better performance/price in optimized scenarios and up to 20% higher raw throughput capacity. Azure’s Dpdv5 and Dplsv5 series VMs consistently outperformed equivalently priced alternatives in compute-bound scenarios critical to Amadeus’s transaction processing.

“We only introduce a different architecture because we expect benefit. We are very interested in the performance/price ratio from Ampere. We want the capability to mix traditional x86 and Ampere CPUs to run workloads on the best-suited processors,” explained Didier Spezia, Cloud Architect at Amadeus. [Source: Arm Solutions Brief]

Operational and Sustainability Advantages

Beyond raw performance, Arm64 architecture fundamentally altered operational dynamics. Energy efficiency emerged as a standout advantage, with Ampere Altra’s single-threaded core design and reduced power consumption significantly lowering carbon footprints while maintaining high-throughput processing. Kubernetes-driven workload orchestration enabled precise resource allocation where workloads requiring sustained performance landed on Arm64 instances while burst-oriented services remained on x86. Amadeus also consolidated numerous services onto fewer higher-density Arm64 nodes, simplifying cluster management and boosting resource utilization.

Maturation of the Cloud Arm Ecosystem

Critical to success was the readiness of Azure’s Arm ecosystem. During testing, engineers found “an already mature Arm ecosystem with seamless Azure integration“, confirming viability for enterprise production. Microsoft’s engineering collaboration with Ampere ensured tight alignment with Azure services including storage, networking, and observability tools. Container compatibility proved equally robust, with full OpenShift Operator support across architectures eliminating major porting obstacles for Amadeus’s applications.

“Ampere’s Cloud Native Processors meet performance and power efficiency needs of the cloud. Our partnership with Microsoft brings Ampere Altra to Azure Virtual Machines, enabling deployment of next-generation cloud applications sustainably,” noted Jeff Wittich, Ampere Chief Product Officer. [Source: Prismware]

Real-World Implementation: Travel Search Transformed

The migration focused on Amadeus’s airline shopping engine – a latency-sensitive distributed application processing complex pricing calculations across massive inventory datasets. Post-migration metrics revealed:

• 40% reduction in per-transaction compute costs for core search algorithms
• 15-20% higher sustained throughput during peak booking periods
• Reduced cooling/power overheads from Arm64’s thermal efficiency

Engineers achieved these gains through architecture-aware optimizations including recompilation of performance-critical C++ components with Arm64-targeted compilers and minor tuning of memory-bound operations. The heterogeneous OpenShift environment now autonomously directs batch analytics to cost-optimized Arm nodes while reserving select x86 instances for legacy components.

The Future of Heterogeneous Cloud Computing

Amadeus’s success signals broader industry shifts. As enterprises prioritize both economic and environmental efficiency, purpose-built processors like Ampere Altra gain strategic importance. Azure’s rapid adoption of Arm-based instances demonstrates mainstream cloud readiness for heterogeneous computing models. Future roadmaps indicate increased workload portability through cloud-agnostic containerization and intelligent orchestration that transparently leverages architecture-specific advantages.

“During tests we experienced high throughput and reduced energy consumption – this Series improves both performance and sustainability of our compute footprint,” affirmed Antoine Collier, Cloud Engineer at Amadeus. [Source: Microsoft Azure Blog]

Conclusion: Blueprint for Cloud Transformation

Amadeus’s Azure migration demonstrates how Ampere Altra Arm-based instances deliver measurable infrastructure advantages spanning performance economics, sustainability, and operational flexibility. Achieving up to 47% better performance/price ratios validates Arm64 as a viable cloud architecture for enterprise workloads when combined with intelligent orchestration in platforms like OpenShift. The hybrid adoption model and heterogeneous cluster design provide transferable strategies for organizations seeking infrastructure optimization. Explore Azure Ampere Altra instances through Microsoft’s documentation and evaluate performance against your critical workloads to begin mapping your migration path.