Airbus is seeking to migrate some of its mission-critical workloads to a sovereign European cloud, though it remains concerned whether it will find a suitable supplier.

As reported by The Register, the aerospace manufacturer is hoping to migrate some of its on-premises applications to the cloud but is seeking a European provider, instead of turning to one of the major US hyperscalers.

Catherine Jestin, Airbus's executive vice president of digital, told the publication that the company was preparing to tender a contract for the migration that would cover Airbus' ERP, manufacturing execution systems, CRM, and product lifecycle management (aircraft designs) workloads.

Jestin noted that the requirement for a European provider was due to some of the information being "extremely sensitive" on both a national and European level. Despite this, Jestin said they remain uncertain if such a provider that meets their requirements would exist.

These concerns surround specifically whether European providers currently offer the scale required by Airbus, while US providers remain subject to the CLOUD Act. According to Jestin, the company is waiting to learn if it could be immune to this legislation, and estimates that finding a European provider is currently around an 80/20 probability.

The tender is currently expected to be put out sometime this month, with a winner selected by the summer. The contract is estimated to be worth more than €50 million ($58.75m) and could span up to ten years.

Airbus is currently a known user of some Google and Microsoft services, and has made efforts to consolidate its data center estate.

The news of a forthcoming tender comes just a few months after Airbus, Thales, and Leonardo signed a Memorandum of Understanding to combine their space activities under one umbrella. Airbus will contribute its Space Systems and Space Digital businesses.

The company was previously one of many European companies that criticized the European Union's cybersecurity certification scheme (CCS) in early 2024, which they claimed would make it easier for hyperscalers to bid for EU cloud computing contracts. The European Union has since launched a €180 million ($209.09m) tender seeking a sovereign cloud provider.