A focus on Infrastructure-as-Code might seem a novel stance to take to some digital leaders, but that’s the approach that Madoc Batters, Head of Cloud and IT Security at Warner Hotels, chose to take to enhance data-led customer experiences at the organization.
For the uninitiated, Infrastructure as Code is a practice that allows for the provision and management of computing infrastructure through machine-readable configuration files, rather than through physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.
This approach allows him to feel confident about pushing the transformation agenda in new directions, he insists:
I think it’s just about keeping an open mind. Look at how companies have advanced with their cloud infrastructure. Maybe link up with your cloud team. A lot of companies talk about silos. Maybe the networking team and the cloud team don’t talk readily together? Get together and talk about the good things and your pain points.
Warner Hotels (formally Warner Leisure Hotels) owns 14 country and coastal properties around the UK. Technology is a massive driver in the chain’s operational strategy, Batters says:
We land a large amount of entertainment within our short stays and our apps support those experiences. There’s the booking front page and our call center, where we use Amazon Connect. We’ve gone fully cloud with our call center and booking. And we want to have the capability to give customers a greater experience with less friction.
Warner uses Alkira’s network Infrastructure-as-a-Service technology which has clear benefits, according to Batters:
We can test and deliver things quicker. A lot of our work involves A/B testing. So, what works and what doesn’t? If you can deploy things quickly, you can test more rapidly and get better feedback.
Other potential providers didn’t have the same focus on Terraform Infrastructure-as_Code, developed by HashiCorp. Batters recalls:
They did a live proof of concept for us. We set up virtual machines in our Azure and AWS environments. We tested the connectivity between those instances. We also tested the connectivity for our on-premises IT and some IP tunnels. So, we tested all that connectivity and I saw Alkira hit the sweet spot.
Making new connections
The Alkira system went live in the summer of 2024. The technology now sits at the heart of his cloud-first approach to business operations. One thing that’s been enabled is connectivity between multiple cloud instances. Batters cites the example of upgrading the organization’s point-of-sale system for its hotels:
We set up multi-cloud connectivity. So, we connected our Azure instances to AWS. That approach allowed onward connectivity to our hotels for our existing infrastructure and to attach to our cloud servers, so straightaway we could connect the point of sale terminals to our servers.
Another area of focus is integration and security. Each of the group’s hotels is currently being connected directly to the Alkira network with the aim of creating a ‘full circle’ approach that means all elements of the business are connected to one platform. Rather than each hotel running a firewall, which can take a long time to modify and update, Batters and his team will then be able to manage security centrally:
We’re going to stand up virtual firewalls within the Alkira core. Again, we can build those with Infrastructure-as-Code. We can affect change on those firewalls and rule sets with Terraform. The hotels can then go through that central, securely managed firewall rather than one controlled on-premises.
Batters continues to look for opportunities to push digital transformation into new areas. Warner is rolling out Alexa Shows to guests’ hotel rooms. The aim, once again, is to reduce friction for customers:
The Alexa Shows are for information currently, but the long-term direction will be for customers to order things to their rooms and book activities. So, we’re rolling that technology out. That kind of work is supported by being a cloud-first organization. We can affect change more rapidly. The cloud helps us experiment, test and deliver more solutions than we could in the past.
Learnings
An important learning from the work to date is that a successful cloud-first business is focused on delivery. A crucial element of that methodology at Warner is related to GitOps, a framework for automating IT infrastructure using infrastructure as code and software development best practices. Batters explains:
To be able to affect rapid change, you need an organization that isn’t in silos. You don’t have operations, design and networking teams – you need streamlined teams. And within those streamlined teams, you need different skill sets to deliver and deploy a product. Then you need to own that product and make changes without going outside your team. Friction slows everything down, so you need to make autonomous decisions and allow people to own what they’re deploying.
And, of course, he remains an advocate of the Infrastructure-as-Code concept:
I’d recommend it to any enterprise. Get a proof of concept, test it and see what you think. See the difference in how fast you can affect change when you can do it with infrastructure as a code. This approach is all about rapid change. And networks in the past have been pretty slow to be able to affect change.