How Qantas have leveraged SaaS and IOT networks for optimisation of airport ground support equipment, reducing costs and improving performance

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28 November 2019 -

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Keith Oliver

A study conducted by Cisco shows that 60 percent of IoT initiatives stall at the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage and only 26 percent of companies have had an IoT initiative that they considered a complete success. Even worse: a third of all completed projects were not considered a success.

Qantas Australia have implemented a large scale IOT SaaS solution for performance optimisation of their motorised and non-motorised GSE (Ground Support Equipment) at their major airports across Australia including Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

The service connects thousands of Qantas below-the-wing assets [from high value aircraft tugs and diesel-electric generators to non-motorised assets such as passenger stairs, cargo dollies and aircraft tow-bars] via 4G and LPWAN networks integrated with Blackhawk’s Azure cloud IOT platform.

Theme of a presentation: “What are the learnings from this project for Australian corporates contemplating a complex IOT investment, why did this project get beyond a POC, what are the critical success factors?”

  • Large corporate IOT procurement process: Qantas ran a competitive IOT procurement process commencing with a global RFP, followed by 4 selected vendors competing alongside each other delivering realtime IOT solutions into Qantas live airline and IT operating environment); why did they do this? how did it work? what are the benefits for running procurement this way?
  • Network selection: why did Blackhawk choose 4G IOT connectivity and which 4G network provider? What LPWAN did Blackhawk select, why, and what other  LPWAN IOT networks were considered?
  • IOT Solution architecture: how is the IOT SaaS cloud platform integrated with Qantas’ enterprise IT environment, and why?
  • There are multiple Qantas user groups across multiple airports in Australia using Blackhawk’s IOT SaaS, how does this create business value?
  • Why did this IOT project get the green light, when the majority of IOT POC’s stall.


Keith Oliver
– Chairman, Blackhawk

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