IBM and Air New Zealand have signed a deal to extend its longstanding relationship for five more years. IBM will continue to provide business and technology services to support the airline’s expanding global business despite the bad turn the relationship between the two companies took last year when a mainframe crash crippled services and disrupted thousands of passengers. In October last year, Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe lashed out at IBM in an internal email. Air New Zealand CIO Julia Raue later said the disruption was casued by "unclean" shutdown of systems for UPS maintenance. When the systems were re-started data corruption and reboot issues were experienced across various platforms.
Under the new agreement, IBM will provide new mainframe and virtual hosting services in a highly available, active configuration, to enhance resiliency of the airline’s core systems.
"IBM has been supporting Air New Zealand’s business for the last thirteen years and this agreement reflects the strength of this long-standing business relationship,” says Jennifer Moxon, managing director of IBM New Zealand.