Possible breakthrough

Airbus towards farewell to big tech: 'EU sovereign cloud for data'

Aeronautics giant prepares 50 million-plus tender to bring mission critical systems and data to a 'digitally sovereign' European cloud and reduce US CLOUD Act risks

by Angelica Migliorisi

26 December 2025

Un Airbus A400M dell’aeronautica militare francese è parcheggiato sulla pista della base aerea francese 104, nel complesso della base aerea di Al Dhafra vicino ad Abu Dhabi (Foto di Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Airbus wants to challenge one of the European industry's deepest dependencies: that on Amazon, Google and Microsoft. This was said by the vice-president for digital affairs of the European aeronautics giant, Catherine Jestin, quoted by French broadcaster Bfm, according to whom the group is preparing a tender to bring 'mission critical' applications and data to a Europe's "digitally sovereign" cloud, with the explicit aim of reducing exposure to US regulations such as the CLOUD Act (the 2018 law that can force cloud providers under US jurisdiction to hand over data they control, even if that data is stored in Europe). The match will open in early January 2026 and is worth over EUR 50 million over a horizon of up to ten years.

In the European context, the issue is not just about Airbus. A European Parliament report published in December points out that AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud hold around 70 per cent of the EU cloud infrastructure market, while the combined share of EU providers would fall to around 13 per cent (2022 figure).

What Airbus wants to move

Airbus is thinking about the transfer of systems that, in a global industrial group, are equivalent to the nervous system: ERP and CRM (resource, accounting, customer and contract management), manufacturing-related tools and product lifecycle management (PLM) platforms. These are the environments where supply chains, factory processes, design data and integration with suppliers and partners pass through, everything that - if read or altered - produces damage that is not only economic but strategic. This is also why Jestin speaks of information that is "extremely sensitive from a national and European perspective".

In the background, there is a second realisation: many large European companies have already adopted US cloud and collaborative suites for day-to-day productivity, but the 'heart' of the systems often still remains on-premise (i.e. running on servers and data centres managed by the company or by a dedicated provider under its direct control) or on hybrid architectures, precisely for reasons of security, continuity and control. Airbus, today, is considering whether there is a credible European alternative to make the leap into the most sensitive segment.

The race

The request for proposals with which Airbus will formally open the tender should start in early January 2026, with a decision expected before the summer. The duration would be up to ten years and the value is described as being in excess of EUR 50 million, with a specific focus on price predictability over the entire period (a typical theme in enterprise migrations, where uncertainty over costs and consumption can become a contractual trap). This figure, for a hyperscaler such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, is not gigantic in absolute terms, but it is gigantic for what it represents, because whoever wins does not just win a customer, but an industrial and political precedent.

For Airbus, however, 'sovereign' is not a slogan: Jestin awaits guidance from European regulators on what it really means to be 'immune' from extraterritorial laws and on another delicate point, often underestimated in migration: the possibility that services and access can be interrupted in scenarios of political tension or sanctions.

Competition and lock-in: the European cloud game

In the background there is also an issue of competition and contractual/technological 'lock-in': changing clouds (or architecture) is often costly and complex, and can bind customers to business and licensing practices that are difficult to unhinge. At the end of November 2025, Google withdrew its antitrust complaint against Microsoft on the cloud while the European Commission was launching a broader initiative on the sector - in particular on AWS and Azure - to assess its market power and a possible designation as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act. In parallel, the Data Act sets new rules to reduce technical and contractual barriers to switching between providers, making it more understandable why a group like Airbus seeks 'predictability' in pricing and conditions that limit long-term dependencies.

Jestin's '80/20'

Jestin's most quoted phrase is '80/20', i.e.about an 80 per cent probability of finding a European solution that really meets the needs. Translated: Airbus wants to do it, but is not sure that the European offer - in terms of scale, service maturity, geographical coverage, resilience and application portfolio - is ready to handle workloads of this complexity without compromise.

The Stone Convitee

The CLOUD Act is often summarised simplistically as 'the US can take data anywhere'. The issue, however, is more technical and legal. The law has in fact clarified that an order issued under the Stored Communications Act (the federal law that regulates when and how authorities can obtain from providers the content and data of communications stored on their systems) can oblige a provider to hand over data that are in its 'possession, custody or control', even if stored outside the US. It is precisely the idea of 'control' - and thus of a possible legal obligation - that worries European governments and strategic industries: in other words, it is not enough for the data to be physically in Europe if the provider remains subject to external jurisdictions. This is the risk that Airbus focuses on: the objective is to prevent information considered 'sensitive' from ending up within a non-European regulatory perimeter, even if only as a theoretical possibility.

Why Airbus is accelerating now

In addition to political pressure, the evolution of enterprise software is also weighing heavily. Airbus, which already uses cloud services such as Google Workspace, wants to bring part of today's on-premise systems to the cloud also because large suppliers are moving innovations to the cloud, pushing migrations that many companies would otherwise postpone. It is precisely in this squeeze between compulsory modernisation and data control that the call for a "digitally sovereign" European cloud is born.