Vistara Airlines Builds Resilience with Cisco SD-WAN

Vistara Airlines is a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, combining rich legacies of quality and customer experience. Vistara Airlines has flown more than 20 million passengers across 36 destinations in just five years of operations. Despite the global pandemic, Vistara Airlines has become the first Indian airline to purchase a Boeing 787 Dreamliner for expanded international operations with plans to grow their international fleet to 70 aircraft.[1] Digital services at Vistara Airlines have expanded alongside this growth. Cisco SD-WAN provides Vistara Airlines security and connectivity for continued resilience and success.

Explosive Growth Stretches the Network

The rapid success at Vistara Airlines meant stress on the network in India and abroad, especially in the face of the adversity. The airline industry runs on tight schedules and stringent customer requirements. Network interruptions risk business losses. In order to build a flexible, consistent and secure network, Vistara tapped their Enterprise IT team to refresh the network and rein in costs. Drawing on 15 years of departmental experience, Vistara Enterprise IT knew the best way to improve service and lower IT costs was to migrate airline operations to a multicloud architecture with SD-WAN.

Connecting and Securing Multicloud Architectures

Multilayer security in SD-WAN helps Vistara Airlines connect and secure multicloud applications

Vistara IT built a robust technology infrastructure with Cisco SD-WAN security to enable real-time and centralized communication amongst its network along with automated security deployments from the vManage console. Built on a cloud-first architecture, Cisco

SD-WAN provides a software-powered, multi-tier IP network with zero-trust security capabilities from their core, across the edge and into the cloud. The Vistara IT team is able to manage everything as if the cloud were a part of their WAN.

With Cisco SD-WAN, Vistara is able to ensure a consistent security framework for management, policy making, and on-boarding of personnel as well as applications. The solution also enables direct internet access across all Vistara airports and offices, with consistent and fully equipped network performance for travelers and employees.

“With Cisco SD-WAN, we don’t have to spend endless cycles on managing the network. Our airports and fleets are connected to business critical muticloud applications, and they are secured with a broad range of cloud-managed controls included in our Cisco DNA Advantage License. We can’t wait to upgrade to DNA Premier and take advantage of the SASE capabilities that comes with Umbrella SIG.” —Enterprise IT Manager at Vistara Airlines.

Picking Cisco

Now, Vistara Airlines enjoys a smooth application performance underpinned with Cisco SD-WAN security. Cisco SD-WAN not only optimizes the connectivity topology to multicloud architectures with features like dynamic path selection over the latest links, such as mid-band 5G, but Vistara Airlines is also able to perform consistent security checks with URL filtering and application-aware firewalling, antivirus filtering through AMP for Networks, and their network takes automated action against threats through Snort IPS integration. Vistara Airlines IT is now able to program and define communication frameworks across the entire multicloud network, including branch offices and airports. With a centralized dashboard in place, each office has seamless visibility and management capabilities where SLAs can be scaled up or down – an important aspect of business in a dynamically changing industry like aviation.

With Cisco SD-WAN, Vistara Airlines is able to deploy automated multicloud connectivity and security from a single dashboard

All of these features are enveloped with a consistent, device-agnostic user experience which makes it easy and cost effective for new deployments. Cisco SD-WAN security also makes it easier to train new personnel in usage and management of the solution. With Cisco SD-WAN security, Vistara Airlines is able offer their customers a trustworthy experience, ready to embrace the latest technologies to better serve both new and loyal customers alike.