Airbus moves 70 critical apps from AWS to Scaleway in sovereignty push

Airbus is shifting 70 of its most critical applications from AWS to French cloud provider Scaleway as it tries to keep sensitive workloads under European control. The value of the cloud deal was not disclosed, and Airbus is not making a full break with US technology suppliers.

Catherine Jestin, Airbus’s head of digital, told The Register that Scaleway was selected on the strength of its technical response and commercial terms, which she said made the offer competitive with public cloud services from the major hyperscalers. She also said Scaleway has agreed to include Airbus in shaping its future product roadmap.

The first workloads moving to Scaleway are part of a larger set of 900 applications that Airbus classifies as necessary for its “Minimum Viable Company.” The initial group includes ERP, manufacturing execution systems, CRM and product lifecycle management software, according to Airbus.

The decision follows Airbus’s earlier plan to seek a provider for sensitive defense and industrial workloads, a process that was not guaranteed to produce a European option. Airbus had said European cloud companies lacked the scale of their US competitors, a long-running issue for large industrial buyers that want sovereign hosting without giving up the performance, services breadth and pricing of hyperscale cloud.

Airbus keeps AWS and other US vendors

Airbus will continue to use AWS for some workloads. Jestin said Skywise, the company’s aviation data aggregation and analytics platform, will remain on AWS, as will its Case Management Assistant for customer technical queries. AWS declined to comment, according to The Register.

The company is also keeping Microsoft and Google productivity tools. Jestin said Airbus will continue to use other US providers, including Salesforce, Coupa and Workday. She said Airbus is not trying to exit all non-European software and cloud services, and that vendor choices will depend on the sensitivity of the data involved.

That distinction is the practical limit of many digital sovereignty programs. Airbus is moving selected high-sensitivity systems to a European provider while keeping widely used SaaS and cloud services where the company appears to see less exposure or better operational fit.

Sovereignty pressure rises in Europe

The Airbus move comes as European companies and governments reassess dependence on US cloud infrastructure. Concern has focused in part on the US Cloud Act, which allows American authorities to request data held in overseas data centers owned by US businesses.

Those worries have grown during President Donald Trump’s second term, as economic and geopolitical tensions between the US and Europe have increased. In response, AWS, Microsoft and Google have promoted versions of sovereign cloud services aimed at European customers. The Register previously reported that a Microsoft executive, testifying under oath in a French court, said he could not guarantee digital sovereignty.

For Scaleway, the Airbus win is a reference customer in a category where European providers often struggle to match US hyperscalers on scale. For Airbus, the deal signals a selective procurement shift: keep US platforms where they remain embedded, but place the most sensitive industrial and defense-adjacent systems with a European cloud provider when the technical and commercial case clears the bar.

This story draws on original reporting from The Register.