The European space industry is entering a pivotal phase. With growing demands for secure, scalable, and modern ground segment infrastructures, space organisations across Europe are increasingly adopting cloud-based software solutions to optimise their operations.
Digital sovereignty is crucial in this shift. Without it, organisations face challenges in safeguarding their sensitive data and ensuring it remains within European borders.
Up until recently, European space enterprises, particularly those who work with sensitive data, were understandably very wary of moving to a cloud solution. One of their key reasons for this is that their European data must remain European, without the chance of foreign interference.
Digital sovereignty can be defined as the ability of a state to control all digital resources, from an economic, social and political point of view — free from third parties or external influences. In short, it fosters freedom of choice and enables us to be less dependent on non-European infrastructures, platforms and internet access points. – OVHCloud
Now things are changing. The need to increase efficiency, drive down costs and reduce timelines is requiring space organisations to digitalise their infrastructure. In May this year, the European Council adopted conclusions on ‘strengthening Europe’s competitiveness through space’, one of which is to enhance the use of space data.
One of the most important aspects of this space data is where it is stored and who has access to it. For European space organisations, this is not an easy thing to do without a European based cloud solution.
The benefits of the large hyperscalers, such as AWS, Azure and GCP, IBM and Oracle, are the high number of mature services, which are highly flexible and scalable, and ready to use. Many businesses are enabled by these capabilities, which gives them the edge they need in a competitive market.
In the U.S., agencies, such as the Department of Defence and Space Force have already moved to cloud based solutions. A further example of a growing shift in the digital sovereignty strategy. Unfortunately, as the large hyperscalers are all U.S. based companies, and there is insecurity introduced by legislation such as the Cloud Act, the choice for European companies is not easy.
So the question is, how can a European space organisation maintain their data sovereignty while taking advantage of all of the perks and benefits of adopting a cloud solution? The answer is Leanspace.
Announcing Leanspace’s Sovereign Cloud Offering
Today, Leanspace is pleased to announce that European space organisations can choose to adopt a cloud provider of their choice, in combination with utilising the best that Leanspace has to offer for their satellite & launcher testing and operations.
Key Benefits:
- Cloud Native – Enjoy the benefits of our cloud-native, flight-proven technology—scale easily, modify configurations on the fly, and adapt to new requirements.
- European – As a European company with Europe-based data centres, we guarantee that your sensitive data remains free from foreign interference.
- Backed by leading European organisations – Airbus, ESA, CNES…
- Security first – Have complete control over your infrastructure with granular access controls, and an insulated layer of security via multiple encryption methods.
- Certified information security management – Ensure confidentiality, availability, and integrity of data from threats and vulnerabilities, protected by our imminent ISO27001 certification.
- Adhere to EU regulatory requirements with data that’s stored in Europe.
- Advisory – we advise when and where to back up and store your data, as well as ensure that you have your required SLAs and disaster recovery strategies.
- Support team – we offer a dedicated team of European space experts to help you build, scale and operate your solutions, providing support in English, French and Spanish.
How Leanspace European Sovereign Cloud works
The Leanspace Sovereign Cloud can be deployed on one of the existing European public providers or a private cloud either in an external data centre or on-premise.
As the image below demonstrates, you fully own the account and all its sub-accounts. You also host your own application and its data on top of your cloud provider’s infrastructure, optimized for your needs, while having access to the Leanspace Platform running in your infrastructure.
There are some requirements to achieve this, as you’ll need to have your own DevOps team who can manage the deployment and maintenance of the Leanspace platform within your own environment.
From Leanspace’s side, we’ll keep making platform improvements as easy-to-install packages. That means that it’s up to you when you want to integrate these improvements into your deployed version, placing the decision-making power firmly in your hands.
Conclusion
Leveraging Leanspace and a European cloud provider is an investment in a future-proofed approach, one that offers you the necessary flexibility and allows you to modernize your sovereign satellite and launcher operations.
Does this resonate with you? If you want to learn more about Leanspace’s cloud deployment options, including European Sovereign Cloud, feel free to click the button below and talk to one of our engineers.
