NCS partnered with a major aviation organisation to develop a cloud-based, vendor-agnostic innovation platform designed to accelerate air traffic management (ATM) innovation. The platform serves as a centralised hub for aviation data, enabling faster ingestion, processing, and reuse for trialling and analytics. By reducing reliance on external vendor platforms and consolidating fragmented data environments, the organisation can now conduct scalable, data-driven trialling with greater autonomy. Built on cloud infrastructure and leveraging Whole-of-Government services, the platform enables agile development and validation of next-generation ATM operating concepts, supports real-time collaboration across stakeholders, and strengthens in-house R&D capabilities.
Key takeaways
- From vendor dependence to operational autonomy: The organisation gains full control over trialling and data, reducing reliance on external platforms
- Data as a strategic enabler: Centralised, reusable data accelerates innovation and improves decision-making quality
- Scalable innovation engine for ATM: The platform enables continuous trialling and rapid validation
- Lower cost, higher efficiency: Cloud-based, shared infrastructure drives cost savings while supporting multiple use cases
The challenge
The aviation client faced significant operational and strategic barriers in advancing ATM innovation due to its reliance on external vendor platforms for data analytics and trialling. Repeated system modifications required for iterative testing drove up costs and constrained speed and flexibility. Without a centralised repository for trialling data, teams spent considerable time collating and cleaning data before conducting analysis. This fragmented data landscape also limited the ability to perform in-depth analytics, particularly for sensitive or strategic experiments. To support increasingly complex airspace operations and future aviation requirements, the organisation required a secure and scalable platform to enable faster trialling, streamline data workflows, and strengthen independent R&D capabilities.
The solution
NCS delivered a cloud-based innovation platform that enables agile, scalable trialling without impacting live operations. The platform centralises aviation data and provides built-in capabilities for ingestion, cleansing, and structuring, significantly reducing the time from problem definition to insight generation. This allows teams to rapidly test, validate, and refine ATM operating concepts using empirical data. Designed to be vendor-agnostic, the platform gives the organisation greater control over sensitive and strategic work while reducing reliance on external systems. It also enables collaboration across a broad ecosystem of stakeholders, including operational users, engineers, researchers, and industry partners, supporting innovation and capability development. By integrating data processing, analytics, and trialling within a single environment, the platform enables more efficient validation, testing, and iteration of new concepts at scale.
Snapshot of capabilities
- Centralised and harmonised data platform for trialling & analytics
- Scalable architecture supporting multiple concurrent use cases
- Secure, vendor-agnostic environment for sensitive & strategic studies
- Real-time collaboration across local & international stakeholders
The impact
NCS’ innovation platform enables the aviation client to significantly improve the speed, efficiency, and scalability of trialling and analytics. By centralising data and workflows, the platform reduces the time and cost associated with data preparation, system setup, and testing. The cloud-based architecture further optimises costs through scalable, pay-per-use resources and shared infrastructure across multiple use cases. At the same time, the organisation gains greater autonomy by reducing reliance on external platforms and vendors. Beyond operational improvements, the platform supports the development of in-house capabilities in data analytics, trialling, and research. It also enables closer collaboration across ecosystem partners, accelerating innovation and supporting the development and operationalisation of next-generation aviation solutions
