Safran Passenger Innovations has today announced a new set of cloud-based services to drive their next generation inflight entertainment and connectivity (IFEC) platform, which has been branded ‘RAVE Cloud Services.’
On Tuesday (May 28, 2024), Safran Passenger Innovations announced the launch of a new set of cloud-based services to drive their next generation inflight entertainment and connectivity platform (IFEC). Branded under the banner ‘RAVE Cloud Services’, the updated IFEC will be comprised of two main elements – Distribution Services and Edge Cloud Computing Services. Deployed on both the ground and aircraft, the cloud infrastructure creates a scalable, reliable, and flexible service-based structure, and has been designed to move large volumes of data to/from aircraft, as well as process and store large volumes of data onboard.
In Tuesday’s announcement, Safran Passenger Innovations’ Vice President of Products and Strategy, Ben Asmar, said,
“We see RAVE Cloud Services as one of the next disruptors of the IFEC industry. It will completely change the way we look at possibilities on board the aircraft, opening new opportunities that are not possible today, and doing this by leveraging existing installed equipment. This means we will be able activate RAVE Cloud Services for our customers with a software update. No expensive and heavy new hardware required or complicated retrofits. We are leveraging the value of our customers previous investments and unlocking the power of the latest RAVE Platform.”
RAVE Cloud Sync is a content distribution system that updates IFE and/or airline content to aircraft fleets quickly and remotely, using satellite connectivity, cellular modem, and aircraft Wi-Fi networks concurrently. The mix of pathways allows large volumes of content to be delivered quickly, and will ultimately allow airlines to constantly integrate new content, breaking the current monthly content update cycle. RAVE Cloud Deploy is a distribution service that focuses on software installation and activation, which also uses multiple distribution pathways, the key difference being how software deployments are managed. This product uses a centralized tool to easily manage the process across large fleets, with a reporting mechanism that provides real-time status.
The foundation of the next generation RAVE Platform will be Edge Cloud Computing technologies. Safran Passenger Innovations is combining ‘Edge Computing’ and ‘Cloud Computing’, two technologies commonly used on the ground, and deploying them onboard aircraft in a novel and innovative way, which provides substantially more capacity and capability. In ‘Edge’ computing workloads run closest to devices and end users, in this case the aircraft, whereas ‘Cloud’ computing broadly includes running all types of workloads in the service provider’s data center. Safran Passenger Innovations is essentially creating a ‘cloud’ data center on each aircraft by leveraging the computing and storage resources already installed onboard, thereby eliminating the need for a physical head end server. This will add significant capability to each aircraft, without adding weight or cost.
Source: Safran