At HPE Discover 2025 we sat down with Carnival Cruise Line’s CIO Sean Kenny. As it turns out, cruise ships are rather special environments. Very demanding environments, as a matter of fact. We discussed the IT infrastructure powering its “floating cities.”
Each Carnival Cruise Line’s cruise ship boasts two 30-rack data centers for redundancy, managing everything from onboard businesses (Guy Fieri’s restaurant, beer production) to crew management and medical records.
Reliable connectivity is crucial, leveraging various satellite providers (Starlink, Kuiper) to overcome challenges in remote areas. High-speed internet access in every cabin enhances guest experience, enabling social media use and streaming services like Netflix.
Carnival Cruise Line’s biggest challenge? Saltwater corrosion, necessitating complete IT infrastructure replacement during mandatory dry-dock periods every 3-5 years. Towards the future, Kenny would like to integrate AI into Carnival Cruise Line’s IT infrastructure. By doing that, the company can further improve guest services and operational technology security. Those are two of the main things that Kenny and the company he works for want to accomplish by means of selecting and deploying the right technology.
Watch the Techzine TV video to learn why cruise ships are quite interesting from an IT standpoint, and learn how HPE helps make Kenny’s and Carnival Cruise Line’s life easier.
Techzine TV
We hope you are already very familiar with our Techzine Global website. We write about the latest news, and also publish many thorough and comprehensive stories that go in-depth about anything IT. However, video is also an important medium to get our message across. That is why we started Techzine TV. You can expect various types of videos on this new platform, which will be integrated into Techzine Global so you always have easy access to the latest videos we produce and publish. These videos can be shot at our offices, on the road or at an event.
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Also read: HPE gives Aruba Networking and GreenLake a security boost