United Airlines is modernizing its mission-critical WebSphere applications to align with its long-term cloud strategy. The airline operates one of the world's largest route networks, with over 4,500 daily flights, relying on a portfolio of Java applications running on traditional WebSphere in on-premises data centers. The challenge was to upgrade these applications, 99% of which were still on Java 8, to Java 17 or Java 21 while minimizing operational disruptions.
Instead of a phased migration, United opted for a direct approach, moving containerized WebSphere Liberty deployments to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (Amazon EKS). This strategy reduced duplicate migration work and accelerated the transition to a cloud-ready architecture. IBM Consulting supported this effort with tools like IBM Transformation Advisor, which helped assess and modernize the applications efficiently.
The proof-of-concept phase focused on two key applications: RestPlan, a crew planning tool, and TurnMetrics, a network operations center application. The team completed the migration in under two weeks, demonstrating the feasibility of scaling this approach across the entire application estate. The process involved analyzing the existing WebSphere environment, refactoring applications, containerizing them, and deploying them on Amazon EKS.
IBM Transformation Advisor played a crucial role by providing detailed reports on application complexity, migration requirements, and compatibility. This tool helped United's engineering teams make informed decisions, reducing guesswork and ensuring a smooth transition. The direct migration path from traditional WebSphere to WebSphere Liberty on Amazon EKS streamlined the modernization process, making it easier to maintain and deploy applications while reducing long-term operating costs.