Airbus Prepares to Soar Amid Digital Sovereignty Challenges

Airbus has announced preparation for a major contract bid aimed at migrating critical workloads to a European cloud designed to ensure digital sovereignty. The company plans to transfer key local applications to the cloud, including ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management, specifically aircraft design documentation) systems. According to Airbus Vice President of Digital Cathy Jestin, some of the information the company handles is extremely sensitive from both a national and European perspective. Ensuring control over this data is a key task. The shift to the cloud is also driven by software providers like SAP developing innovative solutions solely for cloud platforms, pushing clients to transition to systems like S/4HANA.

The request for proposals (RFP) will be published in early January 2026, with a decision expected by summer. The contract, estimated to be worth over 50 million euros ($56 million), will be long-term (up to 10 years) with predictable pricing throughout the period. Airbus’s concerns are linked to the extraterritorial effect of the American CLOUD Act, which allows U.S. authorities to request data stored by American corporations in overseas data centers. Microsoft, AWS, and Google offer solutions aimed at alleviating these concerns, yet doubts persist. Specifically, in July, Microsoft admitted in a French court that it could not guarantee data sovereignty under this legislation. In addition to risks associated with U.S. law, Jestin expressed doubts about the sufficient scale of European cloud providers, estimating an 80/20 probability of successfully finding a suitable solution.