IBM and Delta Air Lines announced a multi-year agreement under which IBM will help lead Delta to the public cloud, in order to increase its agility, speed to market and innovation capabilities around digital transformation. 

As part of the expanded relationship, IBM will provide technology and industry expertise to modernize and migrate Delta's applications to the public cloud. IBM will transform Delta's computing environment to run on a hybrid cloud architecture built on Red Hat OpenShift, enabling a consistent, standards-based approach to development, security and operations across clouds. IBM's team of experts, spanning travel transportation and technology, are working with Delta teams to utilize the IBM Garage Methodology and IBM hybrid cloud software, such as CloudPaks, to modernize existing applications and co-create new solutions powering Delta's transformation. This will help Delta drive greater software engineering productivity and result in an enhanced customer experience in the future.

"As an airline industry leader, we understand the critical need to constantly evolve our digital presence and enhance our customer and employee experience to not only help respond quickly to the dynamic changing conditions but also reinforce brand loyalty from our customers," said Rahul Samant, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Delta Air Lines. "As one of many integral steps we are taking to advance our digital business transformation, IBM will help us migrate to the cloud and create a new operating model that will transform and modernize our technology platform."

"This agreement expands our longstanding relationship with Delta Air Lines to help them accelerate and navigate their ambitious digital transformation journey," said Mark Foster, Senior Vice President, IBM Services. "This long-term project will apply the power of IBM's hybrid cloud approach, enabling Delta to develop applications once and deploy them anywhere, integrate security across the breadth of their IT estate, and automate operations with management visibility."

IBM and Delta have a longstanding history of collaboration on transformative projects that have led to innovations for Delta and the airline industry. Early last year, the companies announced a multi-year collaborative effort via the IBM Q Network to explore the potential capabilities of quantum computing to transform experiences for airline customers and employees.